City Council - Regular Meeting

Call to order? I call to order the City Council meeting July 20, 2026. Roll call.

Mayor DePue? Present. Councilwoman Gillis? Here. Councilman Thomas? Here. Councilwoman Dalbo? Here. Councilman Rainberg?

Here.

City Manager Mahoney?

Present.

City Attorney Rollins? Here. Interim City Clerk Toopin? Present.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please remain standing for a moment of silence. Okay. Item to approval changes a modification to the agenda is manager is there any.

Yes, Mister mayor if we could move. It is 11 he said the August 3rd City Council meeting the business of the quarter program update staff request a little more time to tweak that program.

11 EAR 2026-0219 business of the quarter program update I give consensus to move to table Okay table is granted Item 3 approval of the minutes item 3a regular meeting June 1st 2026 comments questions or deletions Is there a motion to approve

Make a motion to approve regular meeting June 1st, 2026.

Second, Rainbird. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas.

Yes.

Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird.

Yes.

Mayor DePue. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

Item four, presentation of proclamation of PLAAF certificates donations. None at this time. Item five, city manager report.

Mayor and council, I will reserve my report for the August 3rd city council meeting. I have nothing at this time.

Thank you. Item six, citizens' comments. This is the time for the public to come forward with any comments they may have. Citizens' comments related to any agenda matter may be made at the times before the council. Please state your name and address. Please limit your comments to three minutes or less. Item seven, council reports. Councilman Thomas.

Nothing this time.

Councilman Dalvo.

Okay, thanks. I would like to start off to see if I could have Ryan come up and talk about AUDs. It's something that I think that maybe council would consider looking into. As far as affordable homes go, it could be an option for us to incorporate here in our city. So I would like Ryan to talk a little bit more to it.

Good evening, Mayor, Council. Accessory dwelling units, ADUs, are a form of housing. They're very popular on the West Coast. They've been kind of evolving in the urban planning profession as a more affordable housing option or an age and place option. So the question tonight is, I guess, whether the Council desires ADUs. For most of the people that have reached out to staff, the desire is to have their parents age in place. just with the cost of assisted living and independent living. And I would say that most of the inquiries have come from the Shores. I can kind of give a... The state was about to pass a law this year to mandate all cities do it. However, it failed, and it's failed for about three years now. But I anticipate the state's kind of working out the end, kind of the... nuts and bolts of the program a lot of cities have adopted pre-approved plans that allow people to already the city pays for the engineering up front on a set of plans for maybe a studio or a one bedroom and then people just can pull the plans and they can get a permit the same day so it does allow for more affordable housing smaller housing and kind of aging in place i'll be glad to address any questions that council may have

Thank you. At this point, I just wanted to kind of bring it up to council to see if there was a consensus on talking more about that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. I think it's a great point. I also was going to bring it up to council that a friend of mine was looking at a vacant lot. And just to bring it to code, it was going to be $83,762.55 for just our land development code for a point four zero five acre plot of land for uh just our landscaping code and regulation so i was going to bring that up during my reports as well so maybe we could hold a special meeting about both events our land development code as a whole what we could tweak and modify along with ad ad dwelling units so mayor council i'll suggest a workshop for adus and land development or do you want a special meeting with public comment i always appreciate public comment okay so special meeting for adus and uh land development council on the dollar brought brought it up would you rather have a workshop or a special wait i think i think at the end of the day we can accomplish it either way with the workshop or a special meeting so either one's fine and you can still have comment at a workshop um they just you're obviously just not officially taking action

So I guess it doesn't matter, whatever you prefer.

Well, at a special meeting, we can vote on it at that time, right? And at a workshop, we can't, right?

Correct. So at a workshop, what you could do is get consensus for staff, and staff can kind of get the pulse of the commission and bring back an action item. So just like kind of a two-step process, whereas if you have a special meeting and you advertise a specific policy, you can definitely take action in that way.

Because to consider time, I would suggest a special meeting instead of a workshop.

Yes, I agree.

I give consensus. I know that I'd spoken with Ryan about it in the past before, and he said he'd been working on a code on it for a bit, and I just thought he would eventually propose it when he was doing other land development code changes. But there's been a lot of people who've reached out for trying to build, like I said, an accessory dwelling unit for, like, an aging family member and stuff like that, and they faced a lot of problems. So I'm happy to see that go forward.

and a special meeting they can voice their concerns too right yes correct yes special meeting is just like any other meeting public meeting except limited typically to one subject area um and and if you have some kind of guidelines i and again however you want to do this we can talk about the general concept at a special meeting and then you can direct staff or if you want us to bring some ideas however you want to do that but sometimes if

council gives direction ahead of the special meeting then it's more productive because then i'm working with ryan or we're working on kind of bringing stuff to you guys so if you have some general guidelines on that but however you yeah i think the best suited just uh we'll have staff schedule a special meeting and then we'll discuss the two topics i wouldn't uh think that we'd probably have a voting matter at that meeting probably a lot of discussion and presentation by staff so we have all the facts at hand and then we can always move that to a council meeting to actually take a vote on a particular topic.

Great. Thank you, sir.

Okay, and I have one more thing to talk about. It's a little bit more lengthy, and it has to do with the Sabatini Law Firm, and I would like to have a council discussion on where we go from here with them. It's been six months, and it's, you know, the review time has come upon us, and when we hired the Sabatini Law Firm, part of the reason why we hired them was to, because of Mr. Wolf's firm, the the rates that went up. And the rates that went up that year because of all the things that were happening in the city, lawsuits, moratorium, jumping on the state lawsuit, So I have to say the only reason is that with Mr. Wolf is that reason. Enjoying the lawsuit for the Florida, the state of Florida. So we can't really compare apples to apples as far as their monthly fees are, which have been very reasonable. They were about the same as Mr. Wolf's firm was prior to the 2025 year when we started having a lot of issues in the city. But let's move on from that. When hiring the law firm, there was a lot of controversy. I had mentioned during the hiring process my concerns regarding Mr. Sabatini as an attorney. He was fired from Treasure Island after only four months of selecting him. Controversy has followed him, and that was also a big concern of mine. As Edgewater knows, we've had enough controversy of our own. My fear is that continuing with the Sabatini law firm could expose Edgewater to unnecessary risks and potential future liabilities. The most recent is the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Mr. Sabatini and the Sabatini Law Firm represented the plaintiffs using AI to cite, I believe, 11 or eight non-existent cases. It states that Sabatini's filings were riddled with citations of non-existent hallucinated cases. His opening brief relied on at least eight such cases. It's a very long read, I'm not gonna get into it tonight, but you can find it, and if not, you can email me and I can send you the link. Whatever the merits of artificial intelligence are, it's no substitute for actual intelligence. And by signing his name on the briefs filled with hallucination citations not once but twice, Mr. Sabatini violated his professional obligation both to his clients and to the court. If he thinks these claims were not worth the effort, he could have either told his clients they fall short or advise him to hire another lawyer, not file absolutely insufficient pleadings and brief generated by AI tools. So competent court found that Mr. Sabatini, the Sabatini law firm, under his supervision uses, at best, bad judgment, at worst, flat out deceit of clients How do we know this isn't happening? How do we know the city isn't paying for hallucinating AI cases as well? On to another topic. We would all like to work with our friends. And I would consider everyone on the council here and a city a friend. However, where does friendship end and business begin? My understanding is that Diesel is represented by Mr. Sabatini in his personal affairs, and he can be represented.

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

Let me finish. I understand. I agree with you 100%, 110%. He can be represented by Sabatini and his personal affairs, but it does reek of bad judgment on both parties. Absolutely 110%. Can I ask a question? Did the Sabatini law firm ever donate to your campaign in the past? And it goes to two council members, because Charlotte, I hate to say this, but you know, Charlotte got $1,000, Diesel got $1,000. And did they ever donate to your campaigns in the past? And as Diesel's personal attorney, There are things protected by attorney-client privilege the public will never know that may affect the city's business. This is very serious and legitimate questions, very serious, very legitimate, and it's fair for me to ask these questions. I think everyone needs to think about this, absolutely 110%. But we wouldn't know because Mr. Sabatini has a conflict of interest in representing the city and Diesel personally. This is a very gray area, to say the least. I truly believe our residents deserve transparency and clarity. And from the beginning, when this law firm was first hired, we had neither. For me, it felt like someone got their best butt a job, which leads me to one more thing. My concerns, along with the others that have contacted me, is this creates an image of unbiased. Mr. Sabatini is free to donate to any campaign he chooses. it creates that perception of a bias not really to affect change to effect changes is what happened he gave them each a thousand dollars and it's almost it's like a position you hired sabatini now it appears they're getting some sort of a kickback to me it feels like it anyhow so you consider the city is paying two council members elected donations because the city pays Sabatini Law Firm and in turn Sabatini gave two council members a very generous donation. So I'm gonna leave it there for now. I have no trust in a vote that would be geared towards Sabatini, the Sabatini law firm, because of the fact, as things I've just described, at best, it looks bad. It's not professional, it's very gray, it's a muddy water, and I think council, we always need to do, go above and beyond we have to we have to be the example and by doing things like this we're not the example we are we are saying we can do these things because it's not illegal wink wink because it's not but does it look good absolutely not it does not look good so i'm just asking council to consider where we go here with sabatini law firm that's all i have

Yeah, so since I was brought up the most, I'll go ahead and comment first, and then I'm sure that Mr. Rollins, if you'd like to comment as well, you can, but Mr. Sabatini's not here. So let's just start at the beginning. Number one, so why do you have an issue other than personal issues that have gone on with Mr. Sabatini We have another representative here from the law firm. What has been wrong exactly with him representing the city of Edgewater and what has he misguided you personally on if you've ever asked for his opinion on any kind of legal cases in the city of Edgewater?

As I stated, if you listened, I said I was concerned him using AI and what kind of information, what is he giving us? We don't know because we're not lawyers. We pay a lawyer to do this for us because none of us are up here are lawyers, nor would I ever say I am. But I am concerned, as I stated, that we don't know what we don't know. And the fact that you have a personal interest with him, if something were to come up in your personal life that happens to also be city business, where is his obligation?

He can't represent me. He can't. That would be against the law. Yes, it would. It's all public record for what he's representing me on, number two. So that's a totally separate thing. And if it was city related, it would be against the law. You're correct. 110%. There's nothing wrong with what he is representing me on. A personal case is not an issue. It's nothing to do with the city of Edgewater. So bringing that into there is just political optics, and it's wrong. If there was something illegal, he would be bound by Florida ethic laws and not allowed to represent me.

This is not political detail. Well, you brought that up. It is not.

Being political about donations. So you have made it political.

Okay, that is sketchy. That is sketchy. How is that sketchy?

Have you asked him for a donation?

No. No, I haven't, nor would I. Well, there you go. Just the appearance of me getting a donation from anybody up on this council on this dais wouldn't look good. Is it illegal? Absolutely not. I'm taking money from a law firm, and then I happen to be the same law firm that I got the job for. I don't know. To me, it looks a little sketchy.

Well, I went through every qualified officer, and the 17 law firm had the most qualifications. It was the least expensive, as you stated, in your case. your arguments. Number two, you're correct. If you would like to have it on the agenda to be reviewed, the optics was for six months, it would be reviewed. If you would like to bring that up for an agenda item and make your case there, that is just fine. So a representative for the Sabatine law firm can come in and have their exactly what they've done for the city, what they represented us on, and how they would like to comment back. That is just fine.

That's fine with me. This is that time. This is six months, so I believe it's time. And the fact that all these, well, I'm not making an argument. I'm just bringing up points that need to be addressed. They need to be out in the public. They need, you know, this has to be out in the sunshine. It's all in the public. Everyone needs to know what's happening. Well, absolutely. But I just want to make it clear of my concerns as a sitting council member on things that could be going on. Not that I know they are or not. Well, it's all in the public. Yes, so thank you for your time. I have nothing else.

Great, so if you would like to move forward, we could put it on the agenda to be reviewed.

Absolutely.

But your points, I think a lot of them were personal. They're baseless.

Can I add in on this a little bit? I'm not happy about anybody using AI, because I've been saying this for a long time. AI does not fact check. I could write about Joe Mahoney 400 times, and then Joe Mahoney stinks, Joe Mahoney stinks. And then if you go on Google Joe Mahoney, Joe Mahoney stinks. AI does not fact check. It just goes and puts what's out there. Sorry, Joe. But I mean, using AI is not a good idea. So where I'm going to be concerned is if it affects the city of Edgewater, please ask Mr. Sabatini not to do that again. But the reason that I voted in favor of this, like I said last meeting, I told you why I wasn't happy with Mr. Wolf. He told me he was going to do something and then didn't do it. Moving on, we interviewed several law firms. I really like this Vose law firm. They seem pretty sharp. They had eight attorneys, but they were expensive as all hell. And then they pulled out at the last minute. So then I went with my next pick. And believe me. I'm with Councilwoman Dalbo here. If something happens that affects the city of Edgewater, then I'm going to be concerned. Thank God if a mistake was made with AI, it was with them. Just please don't do it with us. I still have trust in you guys. And I have to have trust in you guys. You were my choice. You were my second choice, sorry. But this is where we are. And I'm happy to address the AI thing. And everybody learns nobody's perfect, but guys, AI. And you know what? Another thing. You people on Facebook that are writing stuff, We can tell when it's AI because it sounds nothing like you. Just putting that out there, folks.

So, Mayor and Council, do you want an agenda for a review for the city attorney?

Yes.

I need consensus, please. In his contract, there is no six month review. I thought there was a six month review. I think there was some conversation maybe.

I've had no issue with the Sabatini Law Firm. Everything that the Sabatini Law Firm has represented me on is one case is public. It's been shared all over Facebook. It's public information. There's been no campaign laws violated. And to say I got a kickback because I hired somebody just because I got a campaign contribution is crazy. I get campaign contributions from regular folks every single day that I've helped clean their ditch and get them to the proper department, the City of Edgewater. Is that considered a kickback? I don't think so. I've had no issues with the City of Edgewater being represented by the Sabatini Law Firm. I've heard no case here of why anybody on the dais other than a potential AI case has already been commented back.

It's not potential, sir. It's not potential. It is serious, very serious. Yeah, I'm sure it is.

So to blow it off like it's potential. I'm not blowing it off, if you'd let me finish. it wasn't an epic violation, number one. Number two, it was put out to the public. It was commented on. I've had no issue with the Sabatini Law Firm representing us as a city. Can you guys attest anything where they've misrepresented us on? You can say one case, absolutely. Our former city attorney, they had an issue years ago. It was addressed. It was put to bed. You can look it up. It's public record. Everyone makes a mistake.

That's not a mistake. That is not a mistake. That is purposefully going out and taking the easy road and then putting the clients in jeopardy and then to the court, making the court search and look for these things, and they're not true. They're not there. I read the 12 pages, so I do know it's there, and it's not finished. It's not something to blow off. It's something very serious that we have to be serious about and have that concern about. If that is a type of law that they practice, it's going to trickle down to all their accounts, not just one. Or maybe it's already happening. I don't know. I'm not saying they did or didn't with the city. I'm just saying it's a serious thing that happened, and it's not being blown over. There's things happening.

So other than the AI case, What examples can you provide other than a campaign contribution and a Sabatini law firm helping me on a private matter? What else can you provide of how they have not represented the city well?

Well, I don't know at this point because it's so early on. They've been on here for six months, so things that have happened may not happen for two or three years. I'm not saying that they have or they haven't, but I'm saying, gosh, I think we should really take this seriously is what I'm saying and not blow it off. It's just one thing. It's a mistake. No, it's not a mistake.

OK, so there's no example. I do have one other.

You've said a whole lot of things, and you're dropping words like kickbacks and impropriety and stuff like that. It appears to be.

And you're saying this is not political.

Mr. Mayor, could I make a suggestion? To have that on agenda item, I would ask you to have a consensus of the council to do so. If not, the residents will get their vote August 18th, and they will get their vote on the 2nd. Tuesday in November and they will tell the story but right now I can't it's just worthless hogwash I'd say I would ask you to ask the council for consensus if we want this on an agenda item in the future or not.

Are there any other comments? I do have one other when it came time to decide on an attorney and whether we were going to stick with Mr. Wolf. A lot of people are saying, well, the man has experience with us. Why change now? We're only six months in. Why change now? We just got our second city clerk. I mean, constantly, for six months, they know how we work. They work with the city manager, working with Monique while she was the city clerk, getting the hang of who's who, who does what, how things lie. why start over again what's edgewater is just going to be the revolving door of revolving doors i mean we need to be cutting edge i like this thing you brought up not too long ago that's a great thing with the housing let's be cutting edge i don't want to be here they go again i mean i want to have good staff and and she does have a valid point about the ai thing you can't slight that

I'd be happy to address that, because I think that seems to be the concern.

It is something to be concerned about. It did make the news, and I mean, anybody that goes with AI, you're rolling the dice, man. I'm telling you, it's not good.

So a couple things. First, Mr. Sabatini has strong political positions separate from being an attorney. And so news organizations like Florida Politics, which is pay to play, you literally pay them and they write an article for you. This is well known. And their chief editor, Mr. Sabatini, has tweeted some stuff about him that has caused him to be frustrated, like the fact that he dated underage women when he was younger, things like that. And so they have a rivalry. And so any, if Mr. Sabatini sneezed, Florida politics would write about it. That's first, I think, an important. So news, we all know news articles can sometimes skew things, especially if they're pay to play. Channel 6 is not. They don't get paid to play. They come here and they hopefully do an objective job. They don't get paid by somebody to write a specific story like Florida politics. It's number one. Number two, this was an appellate case, 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on the federal system. And what it was is during COVID, mask mandates and all that were happening. Mr. Sabatini, this was almost two years ago that he submitted a brief AI was very new at the time. Courts were wrestling with what it would look like and that type of thing. There's a lot more guidance now on AI and that type of thing. Mr. Sabatini submitted a brief that had a lot of cases in it because appellate briefs have hundreds of cases in it. They're all about case law. And in that case law, there were a couple of the cases that were hallucinated is the term that AI just basically made up those cases. And so that is basically what occurred in that scenario is the court kicked that back and said that as a result of that, basically you're gonna have to be more careful in the future. This is something that's happened to thousands of lawyers across the country. Morgan & Morgan had literally one of their top attorneys who had been practicing for like 40 years who had 15 cases hallucinated in Utah, and the court said, hey, you can't do this again, gave him a slap and said you have to do better next time, and they have. So lawyers across the country are grappling with this, courts are grappling with this. But it has not in any way affected any other cases, and it was, again, a long time ago. And since then, we at the firm as a whole are very careful in going through every case. I'm a nerd. I like reading case law. I like listening to case law while I'm driving. I know that's odd. Most people listen to music, but I can assure you that we are very, very careful in combing through and going through the nuances of the case law so I can understand where, especially the way the news article, the pay-to-play news article, may have made it seem that would be a concern. I can assure you that we are checking every case and checking it twice and that everything is done with due diligence and review and it's a balance because with cities you want obviously speed and you've got to get answers fast, but you also want to do due diligence. We just actually, all three of us as attorneys, just got back from the Florida Municipal Attorneys Association. We're all three members and we're there learning the latest and greatest of what attorneys across the state are dealing with. And there was an entire session on AI and they were talking about how many people had grappled with it, had issues with it, had accidentally submitted it. Now courts are actually requiring a disclaimer if AI was used in any way, and so basically most briefs now have a disclaimer that says AI is involved. And so like anything, it's a new kind of frontier. And with any new frontier, there's going to be some mistakes that are made. But I wasn't on that case in any way. But again, I think it's important in the context that this was long before Mr. Sabatini was ever even the city attorney for Edgewater. And so if you have any other specific questions, all of you have his cell phone. I think call him and ask him, and I'm also happy to answer. But yeah, so thank you. We enjoy serving the city of Edgewater and would like to continue and That's I don't I don't know what else Other to say about that and I'm ready to to be here to answer questions for tonight's agenda Thank you for that I have two questions was there any kind of disbarment and was there any kind of?

ethic concerns

No. So the ethics concerns on the personal, I think the mayor addressed, like if any of you have a separate private issue that has nothing to do with the city and you want us to represent you, we do so in accordance with standard operating procedures for attorneys. It's not a freebie. It's not anything like that. We represent you in the same way we would represent any other client. and happening to feel a level of trust and with a client because of knowing them in a different capacity as long as it's not in any way related to the city so if somebody attacked the mayor or any of you in an official capacity then we represent all of you in official capacity if there's an individual capacity needed and it relates this city we absolutely would not represent anyone individually because that would be a conflict But if you have a personal matter and you want us to represent you on that, we're happy to as a firm, but that's in keeping with our standard rates and procedures and that type of thing. As far as disbarment, no, all three of the attorneys in our firm are members in good standing, not only throughout all 67 counties in Florida, but we're all barred, or me and Anthony are actually both barred, in every federal district in Florida and have cases in every federal district. And then I actually just recently became barred with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals myself to be able to do appellate work. And so we're able to and have cases all across the state. You know, I was in Tallahassee this week. I was in a federal grand jury in Tampa on Tuesday. We're all over the state and in and out of courtrooms on a daily basis. Why does that help you? Because we get to see how these policies are actually impacted in the courtroom day in and day out. And so I think that's helpful because a lot of firms that represent municipalities They know what the book answer is, but they don't know how judges are ruling on it, how other attorneys are suing on it, how other cities are dealing with it in terms of lawsuits and that type of thing. And so that experience, I think, does help in terms of protecting the city and helping understand what is happening in terms of courtroom challenges to certain policies and procedures.

Thank you. I think someone at our former law office was disbarred, just for the record, for a short period of time. I can't say anything negative that the Sabatini law firm has represented the city of Edgewater from what I've seen. I can't, they call me before each meeting. I said that that was a problem with our last city attorney, at least on my behalf, when I sat down and met with him, please call me before the council meetings to discuss, you know, any kind of legal concerns. He never did. The Sabatini always calls before our representative from the firm, so. I don't have any issues with the law firm and I just hate that everything's getting so political. So is there a consensus for that to move forward, yes or no? Are there any other comments? Seeing no consensus, Councilman Rainbird.

The only thing I have to report is I just got back from a beautiful week in Branson, Missouri. I highly recommend it, it's beautiful. But while I was there, sitting there with my son, and he's always on his phone, because he's 33, so they're always on their phone. And he looks up and he goes, oh my God, what happened to my water bill?

I'm like, oh crap.

So I said, what's going on? He goes, well, my water bill's $55 more than it normally is. It's like, well, maybe you have a leak or something. So he calls the city. I didn't know he was calling the city. This was a little bit later on. And he spoke to the woman, and she looked at the date, a date of high usage. And he's like, oh, we had my daughter's pool party. We had four inflatable pools. and the slip and slide going for the whole day. But he hangs up the phone, my son calls everybody. If there's something wrong, he makes the phone call. He hangs up the phone and puts the phone on the table, and he goes, that was the most efficient customer service call I ever had in my life. I said, who were you talking to? He said, the city of Edgewater. And I was like, really? And he didn't give the girl's name. Girl was Carol, by the way. But that was great to hear. Instead of people here, instead of wah, wah, wah about Edgewater, I think it was pretty cool. And believe me, my son He's not one to give out praise easily, but when I said, who were you talking to? He said, Edgewater. I was like, we're making strides, guy, and we got SOP. We've had so many areas where we don't have any standard operating procedure, and I don't know if that's just how the woman was or if she's done this before in her life where people were just trained a different way, but I think that was awesome to hear that that was... our people. That made my son smile. My son's like, hey, you don't smile that much. But Bridget, she reports to you. Good job. Thank you for that. And I'm glad there was a reason. He had four pools and a slip and slide. That's my report, guys. Branson, check it out. Thank you.

Well, I want to welcome our new man of the city clerk. Thank you for coming to the city of Edgewater. We appreciate you. We're happy to have you here. I promise that pretty soon it won't be this political mess, hopefully. So we appreciate you being here. It's not always like this. We appreciate everyone that works for the city. I'm hearing the same compliments that the city manager called me right back and my ditch is cleaned in a week. So thank you for all that you're doing. along with our great staff have been getting a lot of great compliments we're really stepping it up mr mahoney was it 350 tickets that was unanswered when you became city manager from public works 600 i think it was closer between six and eight hundred six and eight hundred wow So really stepping it up, we appreciate your proactive leadership. I just want to say that I've done absolutely nothing wrong. I'm proud of the way I will continue to fight against overdevelopment in our community, continue to fight for our residents, always listen to our residents' concerns, and be there for them. I would love to be unified. I can't say that I'm unhappy with any leadership in the city. Glad we have a new city clerk. I'll continue to work for the people. And as far as me being spoken by one individual, that'll never happen. I don't care who you are. I'm my own man, and I've made my own decision based on what the residents want and educated, informed decisions based on what I thought was right always. And I always do the right thing on the dais. And if there's any issues, like several residents have tried before, contact the ethics committee. I think there's no issues with me there. I'm an open book. Thank you. Councilwoman Gillis.

All righty. Two things I wanted to talk about. So in the last two weeks, there was two major fundraisers they had at Tailgaters for two local community members. And I don't wanna go, I'd be here for 20 minutes if I would list thank you to all the businesses, but the community came out and between the two raised between 17 and $18,000. for these two very deserving people in need who are locals and i just wanted to thank the community for everything they did and came out one of the girls is getting cancer treatment another one's dealing with some medical issues and the community really came together and that's why i love our community I also wanted to thank the water department. Some of the guys came out to fix an issue that was happening in a local plaza and it was gonna cause several businesses to have to shut down and lose business on their busiest day and they were able to come out and get it all sorted out and I was very thankful for Jeff and all of the guys that came out and took care of them and I know there was happy tears because they were gonna lose business on a super busy day and it was gonna hurt them. So I'm very thankful for you guys. And as far as everything, I still believe that was political theatrics. You can say it wasn't. But to do this and there, I'm going to leave it at that. I think it's disgusting. I don't really know what else to say. I'm going to try to bite my tongue and be nice right now, because this is not the time and place. But hurling accusations like that, I think, is not a good look. And I don't appreciate it. I'm just going to leave it at that. Everything I do, I do with my whole heart, and I do it for the right reasons. I don't beckon to the loudest voices in the room, as some like to say. I go to what I believe is right, whether it's the loudest voices in the room, whether it's the same agreement as me. Sometimes there are a lot of loud voices in the room, and sometimes there's just a couple. But you don't know who we talk to outside of here. And you don't know that maybe there's one loud person here, and I've met with 50 people outside City Hall to talk about the same issue. it is never about who's doing the speaking it is about what i believe is right and that's what i also i believed with the sabatini law firm because i had plenty of issues with aaron wolf i had several issues when i brought up problems i had with him multiple times so for me it wasn't because sabatini law firm was the cheapest and that's what you were alluding to at the beginning that that's the reason we went with them i was not happy with aaron wolf and several decisions that were made so that's just my two cents for now and i will leave it be

Thank you. Item eight, consent agenda. All matters listed on the consent agenda are considered to be routine by the city council, reacted upon by one motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless discussion is desired by a member of the council, in which case the mayor will remove that item from the consent agenda and such items will be considered separately. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

Make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

Second, Rain Bird.

Roll call.

Councilman Thomas?

Yes.

Councilwoman Dalbo? Yes. Councilman Rainbird?

Yes.

Mayor DePue? Yes. Councilwoman Gillis? Yes.

Item 9, public hearing ordinances and resolutions. Item 9A, first reading, order number 2026-0-18, proposed charter ballot language. Staff report.

Mayor Council. This is the proposed charter amendments and the ballot language that was discussed at the special meeting. My suggestion would be to once again go through each proposed amendment and discuss it amongst yourselves. I have a Mr. Soles here who's an expert in development services. I have John Scott from economic development plus myself at your disposal to answer questions and address some

staff concerns regarding some of the proposed amendments thank you sir let's open the public hearing and let's start with council comments we'll go through each measurement and then we'll hear from our residents and then make a motion so exhibit a charter preamble question one charter preamble Presented to the Constitution of the State of Florida, the people of the City of Edgewater adopt this charter as a fundamental law of the city to provide the protection of public health, safety, the environment, welfare, to preserve and exercise municipal home rule authority, to establish a system of municipal government that is transparent, accountable, and subjected to ethical standards, and to promote responsible planning and fiscal stewardship in administration of the city affairs. The city shall exercise and defend its mutual home rule powers to the fullest extent permitted by the Constitution of the law state of Florida consent. With these purposes, the city affirms the following commitments a to protect the city's governmental interests and charter authority be to evaluate major programs, grants, contracts and expenditures for fiscal impact of public benefit. C. To include performance and repayment provisions in public funding agreements where appropriate. And D. To provide the annual public state of the city report summarizing municipal operations, fiscal conditions, priorities, and goals. E. Declares stormwater rights to establish a fundamental for legal action policy alignment and future ordinances. Is there any issues with question one?

is there consent to move forward well as far as the whole rule stuff and all that state law will supersede whatever whatever is in our charter correct correct yeah the the preamble and um i see mr uh

fisher here um he was instrumental on the charter review and kind of bringing this forth and he understands this a lot of it's aspirational it's the it's sort of like we the people in the united states in order to form a more perfect union it's what we want to be as a people of the city of edgewater um but the legal binding effect is is limited so um the home rule is ultimately determined by the state and how they determine just what's understood we're going to try to protect your home rule the best we can but That's the goal, yeah. That's the goal, the aspirations of the city as reflected in the preamble.

Okay, that was consent to move forward with question one. Question two, expanding the council to six members at 37,000. When the official population of the city is shown by the official census exceeds 37,000, the city council by ordinance increases by the number of the city council members to six, creating two additional voting districts with one council member elected from each of the two newly created districts at the next regular scheduled city election. Is there a consensus to move forward with question two?

How do we go about doing that? it follows the census but do we establish that or is that by volusia county board of elections i mean how do you establish a district

So every 10 years, there's obviously the census based on the US census, federal census. But this would allow for, once it hits 37,000, it would trigger. And then what you would do is you would expand the districts to be co-equal districts, but you have to expand by two. I mean, you don't have to, but it's really wonky if you don't have uneven numbers for votes. So then you would expand that, and what you would do is you would refer to an independent government agency for your data. So that can be, UF has a kind of inter-years census that they provide, and there's several other sources we looked at, but that you could direct staff to come up with an independent census data that is, because obviously you're not using the census data, but also the U.S. Census Bureau has inter-year estimates on population and that type of thing. So it just has to be an independent governmental agency that basically is determining what the actual population is.

So it's by population, not border?

Well, so once you hit 37,000, it triggers, and then... Two more equally divided. Correct, and then you take the total population, and then that would be, you guys get to decide how you want the districts actually carved. But they have to be by law, they have to be co-equal by population. you can't have like one that has like you know 30 000 in it and seven carved up or something like that they'd have to be population um co-equal by population but how you draw that like if you wanted one to that's where that you you guys have some discretion in that so you could direct staff so let's say you walk through the scenario if this passes the city hits 37 000 residents then um What would happen is you could direct city staff to bring back maps that would incorporate those two additional seats and divide them up, and you can discuss different maps and which ones you like and think are better versus others.

So I'm just asking because there'll be no gerrymandering or anything going on like that. It's going to be equally divided. So we'll take the whole total population and maybe redraw district lines. Correct.

Every 10 years you have to redraw district lines in general anyways because of the population. What's happening here is you're doing it once you hit that threshold of the 37,000.

So that's standard procedure. I'm just asking because it doesn't need to be in here because this is very vague. It's just saying 37,000, you're going to add two more districts. How do you do that? So that's all SOP? Yeah.

So this is what's going in the charter and like actual how it's done will basically just be in accordance with how you guys already do it. It's just saying you get two more seats and it happens at 37,000. But the way it's actually done from a mechanic standpoint is staff will come up with seven co-equal districts based on population, and they'll come up with several different maps because you can obviously divide a pie in several different ways. And then they'll bring those to you, and then you guys can jointly decide which ones make the most sense. Perfect.

Just wanted to get that.

Yeah, it's kind of complicated, and we went into a lot of detail of the charter review on this, and we did some research on what, and instead of putting it in the charter, because you typically don't want to put all the nuance and detail of everything in the charter, but UF has a great census process for populations, and then the U.S. Census Bureau actually, in fact, in between their official 10-year decimation, or however that, you know, every 10 years census, they keep figures all along. So you could take either of those sources and use that as your determination.

Thank you.

I give consensus for that to move forward.

Yes.

Question two moves forward. Question three, native plants. general powers f native plants and florida friendly landscaping requirement upon the expiration of prohibit against restrictive regulations to comprehensive plan or land development regulations enacted by florida legislature chapter 2025-190 laws of florida the city council shall adopt and maintain land development regulations requiring an all-new construction within corporate limits of the city of edgewater provide landscape it gives us there not less than 80 percent Natural and or Florida friendly plants as defined by ordinance. Native and Florida friendly landscape requirement requires adoption of land development regulations maintaining that at least 80% of landscape and new construction consists of native or Florida friendly plants as defined by ordinance.

And this similarly is not specific, and obviously the 80% is specific, but the Florida friendly plants like UF has a good, and the sponsor or the proposer of this brought this up during the charter review, that UF has a good Florida friendly plant list. And so the ordinance itself could reflect that. But the ordinance, the reason for that is the charter obviously is less flexible. So you put this in the charter if you want, if the voters want. the ordinance can change and be tweaked as needed as a part of the land development code regulation updates. And so that's where this gives the general goal 80%, and it is binding, that 80%, but what the native plants list is, that would be added into the ordinance, enabling ordinance if this passed, if that makes sense.

Mayor and council, the city staff has other concerns with the native plants. Clearly, we're four. use of native plants. And we do promote that in our conversations with developers and our planning and developments. But we do believe that it's not flexible in the charter. City staff believes it would be more appropriate in the land development code as an ordinance. You know, we cannot forecast the future. If there were an issue with this requirement, the council would not be able to modify it because it would be our charter, which is our constitution. Uh, so we think the most appropriate as an ordinance. Um, you know, there is another, like I give you an example. Um, if we go to primarily native plants, um, and they use less reclaimed water right now, we're not discharging nearly as much water as we used to in the Indian River. If we were to encounter a problem, not something that could happen, it's not fear mongering. Let's say it happens in four years and we have to end up discharging more into the lagoon and we don't want to, we would not be able to modify this requirement if it were to be a problem in the future. So we think it's just, it's not flexible and belongs in the Land Development Code as an ordinance, not in our charter. And Ryan Solstice is here if you have further questions regarding those comments.

It's already in new, it's 50%, right? Is that for new? Yes. I think it's already 50% just for more information and consideration.

The land development code already requires 25%. 25%, okay. That's pretty standard across both shrubs, ground cover, and trees. And it's a requirement in the land development code currently.

And currently, I believe it was said that typically by the Bullish Builders Association, new development is around 50%. I think that's where that number came from. Is that correct?

Yeah. Typically, by the time you do the landscape buffers on the rear city staff and a lot of the newer ponds, we make them leave it natural. Instead of clear cutting, as that was a seems to be that was a preference by the public and the community as a whole. So we've adopted that where you don't clear the first 50 feet and then then you can come in and go in there. And so, yeah, I think that is challenging. I think one of the hardest parts is getting away from sod, right? That'll be really difficult for a lot of people to completely get away from sod or at least limited to only 20% of your property. That'll be challenging, but it is possible. And to Joe's point, the reduced water, we just need to be cognizant that we may need to prepare on the backside of this for, not speculating, but if we do need to, we just need to be prepared and understand what the demand of our reclaim is for the amount of units that are coming online to what's being absorbed by everyone's landscape. So just keep that in the back of your mind. Staff may have to come back and say, okay, This kind of change here has resulted in more reclaim, so we need another 10 acres to the wetland park, or whatever it may be. So just food for thought.

And that'll just result into, again, water going back into the river.

Well, you know, I mean, so the end goal here is to put it all in the wetland park, right? But obviously, if the demand is out surpasses that we're making this or this regulation now, the wetland park was designed on what our current kind of demand and what the forecasted demand was going to be. So if that changes, we may have to make amendments.

Make the wetland bigger.

Correct.

I would think it would require less water for natural plants.

well yes to your point mayor yes they do require less water and that's why there'd be less reclaim and so that would be the concern and this is just regulating the builder once the person gets the cfo and moves in they can rip it all out and put their whatever they want in just saying i've already seen a couple places that have you go down they've done it already yeah you'll notice that my house there's not an oak tree from the driveway

I do meet my tree requirement, though, but it's not five feet from the driveway.

So we're talking an extra 30% of natural vegetation, natural plants.

Are we voting on this, Beth?

We will have to make a motion for it to move forward, yes, sir.

And again, I don't want to weigh into policy decisions, just options-wise. If you didn't want to put it in the charter, you do have the option to update the LDRs without putting it in the charter. You can do that at any time through the normal process. So that's, those are, you have lots of options. Just wanted to clarify that.

I kind of like to piggyback on what Joe was saying. With 80% of native plants as the new norm, if we were going to put this, the ballot, perhaps have an all new construction without the access to reclaimed water, shall have 80% native plants. And it says the argument that potable water conservation and landscaping is notable, but the concerns of unintended consequences is not having enough purpose for the reclaimed water application and the wetland park will reach a capacity much more quickly, as Ryan just stated. And then we'll then have to either expand the wetland or discharge into any river lagoon, which we're building such strides to not ever have to do that again. So this is maybe some unintended consequences that we could run into. It's not pure mongering, as Joe said. It's an option that could happen. The new development. We'll be creating additional reclaimed water and those with no access to reclaimed water should be required by code to have reclaimed irrigation system as we want them to apply to the reclaimed water so they can do their landscaping. With 80% native landscaping in areas with access to reclaimed water, it would be easily discourage them from having to use so much reclaimed water and in a sense create an overabundance of residual reclaimed water that would have been discharged into the Indian River Lagoon. So if this moves forward, I personally would like to also see it in the land development code, the LDR. I think it would be a better fit and we'd be able to maybe even do a case by case, because I love the, in the beginning I was a little hesitant on 80% going from 25 to 50 to 80, it was a big jump. But I met with Mandy and she made a lot of great cases and since then I've done some more homework on it and 80% is not out of the realm. It's just we have to think about ways to go about it and who should have the 80%, you know, why it's important and why sometimes we should steer away from it. So I would just like to consider putting it, it's important. I'm not saying it isn't. I think it's a great thing. Maybe it's not best fit in the charter, but maybe in the land development code. That's all I have.

I also vote no. I think we would be restricting ourselves if we did this. I think it fits better in the land development code.

I just had one question. Mr. Fisher, I believe you were on the charter review. If you're comfortable answering this question, great. If not, no pressure at all. Can you state again why it was defined at 80%?

No, sir, I can't. I'm not really sure where that number came from. I didn't present that, but I do not have an idea.

Thank you. All right, so how about the...

I was told by several of the, or not several, couple of the people that were on the board, a lot of the reasons these are being put on the charter review is because nothing's been done. And I said, well, I just got here, give me a chance. And they do agree that if it's not on the charter, at least get it in the land development code because so much of this stuff has been neglected. I don't like the 80% number. If it was 50 going to 80, I'd be like, okay, but from 25 to 80, I'd be more comfortable with 50.

Well, that's exactly what I was just about to say. Because our land development code right now is at 25, so could we at least agree to do a charter amendment at 50? and then along with a potential ordinance at the higher.

Or to make it a little bit more impactful, we can stay at the 80 in land development code. Yeah, you can change it. We can move the land development code easier. I don't have a problem with 80 to try it, but... that this is binding. And I'd at least like to give my word to the people that asked for these, well, you haven't been doing it, so now we want it. So they're kind of forcing us to do it in some way or another. I have no problem with putting a lot of these in land development code, but a lot of this stuff is strict. And like I've been saying for the last couple months now, if the people do say, oh my god, we screwed up, you can't fix it right away. Here, we could have a meeting, and then if we really need to get it changed, we could have another meeting in two weeks. We could fix it in six weeks, or we call another special election for $80,000, and maybe it'll get fixed. 100% of the people could say, we screwed up, we want to change it. Can't do it until the next election or special election. There's three men here that might be able to answer this. If we do decide to have a special election, you can't have it in two weeks. Lisa Lewis's office has to run it and it's gonna be on a Tuesday in November, correct? We can't have a special election in a month because we want to. She has to be ready to do it, right?

Yeah, there's significant cost and notification requirements with special elections for sure.

So a lot of damage can happen in two months with a bad decision. A lot of this stuff I'm not comfortable with having to wait. Even if the people do realize we want to change it back to something, you have to wait. And I'm a little bit uncomfortable with that.

Plus, we have one code enforcement officer, and he's spending 100% of his time picking up roadside.

Well, I'm fine with a charter ordinance because it makes it permanent, but I think that there is potentially, I don't know how the other councilman feels, but there's already three on the floor for an ordinance the way it sounds.

I would support an ordinance, but I would rather see it go in the charter because the charter kind of... Well, you still have it up. The reason people are wanting us to put things in the charter is so it can be reversed. And they're begging us for stronger codes for these new bills. So I think I'm already kind of out-consensused. But I mean, I would have liked to have seen it go forward to the people.

That makes it permanent. And it's a good measure. Is there a consensus to move forward with an ordinance or is there a motion or a second consensus to move forward as a charter amendment?

I didn't understand your question.

Is there a consensus to move forward as an ordinance or is there a consensus to move forward as a charter amendment? Question three. Sorry, question four.

My vote would be to eliminate the that wording from the charter.

And to have it go into an ordinance?

Yes, under the land code, yes.

I agree.

At 80%? At what? 80%. 80%? No. So then, well, that's what the wording is at right now is 80%. If you want to have an ordinance.

Like I said, I'm voting against it.

We understand that. But to move forward as an ordinance instead of a charter amendment.

So you would have time to. Yeah.

That would be a separate. I would like to move forward as an ordinance. But not at 80%.

So it'd be a separate ordinance at a separate meeting that staff could bring forward language and then we could have a discussion whether it's 50, 80.

As an ordinance, we have no time limit.

Correct.

So does question three fail to move forward? Three or more members, please speak.

Yes. I'm with Mike to move forward as an ordinance going into the land development code.

I'd like it to move forward, though. I don't want this forgotten. I'd like it to be an ordinance, and we have to do this.

So question three, we'll move forward as an ordinance. Question four, annexation, general power. Annex property elimination or increase in density. To protect the public health, safety, and welfare and preserve existing development patterns, property annexed into the corporate limits of the city of Edgewater shall not be assigned or approved for a land use density greater than the permitted under the acceptable county land use designation. Is there any classification? And effect immediately preceding annexation. Limitation of density for annexed property.

So, Mayor and Council, staff has the same concern with this proposed amendment being not flexible. It could reduce the desire and benefit to annex into the city. And the parcel could still be developed. And if it were developed, while it's not annexed, we would still bear the impact. our roadways our parks to our police department to our fire department etc without receiving any of the revenue from ad valorem or impact fees so that's staff concerns once again ryan solstice is here who's an expert in this field that can answer specific questions regarding it yeah can you please explain that a little bit more the ad valorem

So on a tax basis, when you're in the county, you don't pay city taxes. So your tax bill right now, the city of Edgewater is at $6.33, or $6.6.33 for every $1,000 that's assessed on your home. And so we have part of our ISBA, that interlocal service boundary agreement, It's where we are allowed to annex by right. It's an agreement between the city and the county. Each city and the county has one. And it allows you to annex by right through that person petitioning. Because again, it's almost always voluntary annexation in Florida, 99.9% of the time. And so if you un-incentivize to annex into the city, The problem with that is that our municipal service agreement follows our interlocal service boundary agreement. We're legally required to provide utilities to people within that agreement area, that service area. Hence why we tend to develop those areas within that agreement area, because we want the revenue from taxes, we want the impact fees, and we don't want there not to be a reoccurring cost to the residents of the city providing those services outside of when they're not paying taxes, essentially.

I was like my question last time. We have to provide them. so we'd be giving them services and not getting paid for it. They'll just stay in the county and do what they want.

Well, they would still pay for the utility services as a customer, but closest unit when it comes to police and fire, it would still burden our police and fire department for emergencies. Then there'd still be impacts to our road and our traffic and to our parks without receiving that revenue to offset that impact, so. You know, and being able to, you know, the city council would have control over what occurred at that parcel, too, if they annex into the city. We have more authority over the jurisdiction of that parcel.

Makes me wonder what benefit they have to join, to annex into the city. Why would they want to?

Keep the taxes.

Just... I could stay over here and still get the benefit of you paying for my stuff.

Well, typically, so in Florida, kind of the way that it's set up, from both an environmental, reducing urban sprawl, right? You want people within whatever the limit is of the city, right? You want people on your utilities. You want to reduce septic. The more people on utilities, the more economies of scale, the cheaper utilities get. From an environmental standpoint, septic systems aren't very good, especially being so close to the Indian River Lagoon. And so the benefit of coming into the city is typically the city has higher densities has higher intensities But it also provides those services like it's very hard. You'll see very few In very rural places, the development is very limited because it doesn't have central sewer, central water. When you don't have those services, you can't really develop. It's very, very challenging to develop. And you want people on services to reduce sprawl and so forth. And so if our municipal service area matches our ISBA and we have to provide people service in this area, we want as many people on that service.

Thank you for that.

Are there any other further City Council discussions?

I just, I feel like this one goes along with things that residents have been asking for because the goal of that is to slow the unchecked development and I think by sitting and saying your major issue is they're gonna build it anyway and we have to worry about getting the tax dollars for it, that's still kind of to me just saying like to hell with it, let them build what they want and that's the problem is everybody's just letting everybody build what they want to heck with the people that are still here and i think the residents wanted to say and that's why this came up because they don't want to see these big crazy developments popping up on the outskirts around them because this doesn't say they can't build it just says that they can't change some of their designations i just think it should go to the ballot it's giving it limitations on over development i agree let the people vote mr solstice

Does live local affect that? If somebody were to annex in the city, and we accept them in the city, and then we don't?

Yeah, so I guess in that case, and Gavin can correct me, but I would assume that if you annex someone in the city, and they had to basically keep the same existing zoning, unless they were applying for commercial and industrial, right? Then under that, actually, that kind of goes into an interesting catch-22 there. But from a residential standpoint, no, live local only applies if you're commercial and industrial. Now, that being said, we could see, although we do have protections which have kept it pretty much at bay, live local in Edgewater. With that being said, and I'm processing this as I'm talking about it, if someone wanted to annex in, You could be sneaky. You could annex under this agreement or this charter amendment. You could annex into the city, tell the council you're going to come in as commercial and industrial, and then pop out live local, which would be legal.

Yes, I concur with that because live local is preempted at the state, so there's nothing the local could do if they were doing a certain type of development on a certain type of zoning.

And they could increase density.

They could. This would only affect non-live local. But the reason it doesn't trigger Senate Bill 180 is because the density is staying the same as what they were allowed to before. So it's not an added burden. It's just not allowing any additional density. But it would not prohibit live local because that's a state preemption issue. The state has already preempted live local development, along with a lot of other things. Obviously, the state continues to limit local control over growth.

Ryan, this could be an ordinance or a land development code as well, correct?

Yeah, yeah, it could. And I think it's important to note that, too, you know, these charter amendments, the way they're written, in order to avoid some of the SB 180 restrictions, right, they don't go into effect until SB 180 expires. However, at the expiration of SB 180, you could pass the same ordinance. So, I mean, I guess, right? So these don't necessarily, these aren't in effect until, even if they pass at the ballot, they're not in effect until SB 180 is gone. And so under that same guise, I mean, if the truce really wanted to do an ordinance, you could do it at the same time that this would become an effect if you had pre-programmed it up.

Okay. My concern is, Sort of what Joe had outlined. They would be able to, if they were in a county, they would be able to not annex into the city, but they would resume and develop an unincorporated part of Edgewater without any input or control from city council, so we would not be able to say what county can't be. Greater impact on the city services without the benefit of receiving impact fees or tax dollars yearly. so whether they they don't annex in that's fine they're still going to build what they're going to build but then council the current council at the time will have no ability to say yay or nay because it's county uh although they will be getting all of our services and we'll get another benefit so that's that's just that's concerning and we have to think about that long term um the tax dollar because we have so much infrastructure and things that we need help with, and this has added extra cost and extra stress on our taxpayers. As development opportunities south and west, including Glencoe area and Deering Park, or within Edgewater Utility Service area, we would still be required to service them. These same areas are within close unit response for police and fire. Requiring those services to be to respond as well again We'll get no impact fees for police or fire, but we'll have to respond to these these calls The same residents not paying taxes will also have full access to the parks Programs as we travel our local roads and patronize our local businesses creating additional impacts for the very thing the impact fees and our tax dollars paid to extend and maintain So I guess what I'm saying is that they don't annex in, it's still gonna cost the residents. It's gonna cost us and we're gonna get none of the benefit. So my concern is that if we were to have it so that they have to come to council, they have to annex in, and then council is able to say no, we're not going to increase the density, they can say yes or no, but the fact is if council has no opportunity for an input, then we get what we get and we get no tax dollars in return. So that's a big concern for me with this one.

But I think that's a good point, too, is the council, as I've always come up here and told you, you guys have the ultimate authority. Your biggest legislative power is in that future land use element. And so you have the right to tell someone whether you're going to annex them into the city or not. You have the right to change the future land use. That right becomes more administrative once you assign a future land use for the rezoning. But I've always said to you, your power is that you control the future land use of the city. So if you don't want to see that there, don't change the future land use. Have I not told you that before? If you don't want this project, don't change the land use. And so you still have that power. And so to a certain extent, you're giving away your right, your power, to which we elected you for.

Is there a suggestion for it to move forward as a charter amendment or an ordinance at this time?

I would still like to see it move forward as a charter amendment. I think that's what the people have been asking for and that's the kind of thing they've been wanting to see. As I said before, they want to see it on the charter because it is so easy to get rid of and you get three votes and it'll all willingly be changed again, so.

Yes, I agree. There's not a third to move forward as a charter amendment. Is there a third to move forward as an ordinance discussion?

Yes.

Not even as an ordinance.

Oh, as an ordinance discussion. Yes. I'm sorry.

Question four moves forward as an ordinance discussion. Question 5, sale of city parks. Sale of city parks. Voter approval required. Real property owned by the city of Edgewater and designated as a public park by the city shall not be sold, transferred, otherwise converted unless the sale is first approved by the majority voter of the qualified electors of the city of Edgewater at a referendum held during a regular or special municipal election.

i'm all for this moving forward on a charter amendment so mayor council uh staff does have the similar concerns um i want to preface this our charter community charter review committee did a great job and these are important issues and i think they're just more appropriately placed in ordinance So there is some flexibility there. I don't foresee the city ever selling any of our major parks. They're beautiful and we'd be silly to do so in my personal opinion. I do think that, you know, I met with some residents recently and we did some discussion of maybe giving an easement for a private dock on Riverside Drive. You know, in my opinion, there may be some legal workaround, but this would prohibit us doing something like that if we wanted to provide a private citizen an easement or a right to a small sliver of our park. I do think it's a really important proposal and I think that if you were not advancing the charter you should advance it with the more strict voting. Rule may make it were asked to be unanimous or super majority. If the council were to take any action with the sailor conveyance of a part it shouldn't be a 3 to my opinion should be a unanimous or super majority is that that would be legal correct Kevin.

Correct, yeah, you guys could limit yourself in that way for, like, especially if you put it in the charter where it had to, it could only be sold if there was a unanimous. It would be problematic if it was an ordinance because, of course, you could overturn your own ordinance. But see what I mean? Either way. So you could, yeah, you could. amend this charter language based on what the city manager is saying if you wanted to to say instead of voter approval for any sale that it would require unanimous vote by the council still make it really hard to do anything with city property but give a little more flexibility without having to have a special election or wait till the next election um The city of Treasure Island actually has a parks provision in theirs, and one of the challenges they faced with that was they wanted to take and redevelop a certain area, and there was a little piece of strip that wasn't really even being used as a park, but it was technically a park, and so it was going to prevent the whole project from moving forward unless they had a referendum on it. So those types of situations can create challenges. But again, it's ultimately a policy decision.

I feel like we are reopened for us.

I just feel like with this one, it's the staff recommendations and all the others like this one, you guys are worried that it would be hard to undo, but that is the point. I mean, that's what people are wanting. They don't want... some of these things that can just be easily turned over again in the future when you get three people up here that agree and it's the people are asking for things to be more permanent i mean we're going to get to city hall next but look what happened with city hall it was supposed to be in the hands of the people and then god you know taken better than had it changed with a couple of people on council i just i think this needs to go to the voters i agree

It's public land, let the people have it.

Don, could you come up and talk a little bit about some of the cities that we visited and the private public partnerships? Thank you.

Yeah, so we've had a vision of making this waterfront property you know, a walkable area that the citizens can enjoy for a long time. One way that communities have been able to accomplish this is through public-private partnerships. We went on our tour. We saw a few of these. The benefit for the cities is that they are able to basically not go in alone in accomplishing their goals. They're able to partner with developers and other businesses to define what they want to see and then dictate the terms of how that development happens and maintain control. Some of them that we saw, one of them, my favorite, was what I call a food court. It was basically a large building, almost like a community center, and inside they had several small restaurants, almost like a business incubator for restaurants, where the person that took your order actually turned around and made the food and made that. Another type of public-private partnerships is pretty common, is the development of something like a community center, whereas the city will fund the development of the infrastructure or the roads, and they might have a private developer come there and develop it. Some other ways that they could do that is the city themselves develop the entire community center as a way to attract other businesses and other things like that to grow businesses around it. So there's a lot of different ways. The ideal thing to do with public-private partnerships is to use whatever position you have as a landowner or a local government to attract private investment, which also gives you the benefit of generating more revenue for the city or for pouring back into that area. Right now, this entire block from IUS 1 to Riverside Drive from East Park Avenue to Lamont, all combined, that's generating about $37,000 a year for the city of Edgewater in revenue. Obviously, having any kind of public-private partnership or development would obviously make that go much higher. This area is still in the CRA, so that money would go back into the development, but that could eventually be used for money in the general fund to go through other things that the city's working on, whether it be flood water or storm water control or anything else that the city needs it for. Any questions or?

We had a, we had a study done that talked about developing downtown or It seems like I'm not trying to catch off.

Council on double but this is just for the sale of city park. This is not developing downtown. Potentially, this area is not a part. I didn't know if it necessarily we're trying to discuss the next question, which would be sale of the city hall property. Thank you. So this is just question five, sale of city parks to be the voters to vote if they would ever want city parks to be sold or not and require a majority of votes from the residents to be sold.

I would like to see that move forward to the ballot.

I give consensus to move forward. I think at the last meeting it moved forward. yeah i really don't see a problem but joe gave a good example of why it could be a problem but at the end of the day that's um we have no plans on silent city parks and mr mahoney to your degree uh talking about slivers um i don't see lease in here that you couldn't lease a sliver of a park sure we could yeah legal workarounds So perhaps we could explore that measure if residents are requesting that, because I did get a call about that.

I did send that question to the Sabatini law firm to get some clarification for that particular request.

Thank you. Okay. So is there consensus for that to move forward? Yeah.

Yeah.

Question. Oh, okay. It fails. Four to three to move forward. Question five moves forward. Question six sale of City Hall. This is double-sided.

I hate this. Mr. Mayor, if you could just, on those, if there's not consensus, it sounded like there was. Was there?

There was consensus.

Oh, there was. Oh, I thought, Councilman Thomas, sorry.

I was going to say you wanted to... I don't know, but there was, what, four against one.

Four against one, yep.

Okay, just wanted to make sure the minutes reflect clearly how it was.

We'll go over it to you when we're done. I've got it written down. Question 6, sale of City Hall. Voter approval, real property currently owned by the City of Edgewater designated City Hall with partial ID number 7452 slash 01 slash 00 slash 0067 shall not be sold, transferred, or otherwise conveyed unless the sale is first approved by a majority vote of the qualified electors of the City of Edgewater at a referendum held during a regular or special municipal election.

So Mayor and Council, same concerns my staff. It's not flexible. We think it'd be more appropriate as an ordinance with a unanimous vote by Council. We are very cognizant of the deed restriction of 1948 that was lifted. At that time, the only building was our police department, what is currently our police department. As this building here, City Hall was constructed in 1954. In 2025, we completed another visioning session and that determined that we should develop a downtown Park Avenue. Obviously, the city's goal at your direction is to make this available more to the public and public use. Currently, unfortunately, they're visiting the police department for a good reason. is full of staff bustling at the seams. And you come here to pay utility bills or come to a public meeting. So staff's opinion, this is not the best public use for this property. It is right now, but not when we redevelop it and grow as a city and expand as a personnel. So aside from that, there was a vulnerability study that revealed that we should not build critical infrastructure at this location. And if we put this restriction in place in the charter, which is not overturnable easily, it could diminish our ability to form a private-public partnership. And then if you look to the future, you know, we are going to grow as a city, hopefully responsibly grow, we get their unscathed from others like some other cities down south. But as we grow, we're gonna need a new city hall complex. We are gonna need a new police department. And if we're able to have some monetary gain from this development while retaining some ownership, I'm not saying we would have no ownership here. That would be silly of us. But if we were able to get some monetary gain to offset the cost of the future construction of the city hall complex and police department, that would be a benefit to the taxpayer. If not, they're gonna have to bear the full burden of those complexes, which are not inexpensive. And then in spirit of the deed restriction, we can even guarantee through a BPUD that we can get with that same size building or bigger, we can say, hey, we guarantee that we're going to build a community center, that exact footprint of that building somewhere in this redevelopment. And I think you heard John Scott, our economic development manager, speak in the past. Currently, the revenue created from this stretch of Park Avenue is somewhere around $30,000 per year. If it's redeveloped properly and responsibly, the revenue would be in the $300,000 range. Once the city starts making revenue, we can help offset other things throughout the city, including utilities. So it's something that I understand the loyalty to the deed, the restriction that's no longer in place, but we can still honor that through other means to make sure that that family is what they desire to still the outcome. So that's staff's comments on that. And Ryan and John are here to speak further if you have questions, and myself.

Thank you, sir. Just for the record, this moved forward three to two as an ordinance at our last city council meeting. So discussion, council comments.

Mr. Mayor, I asked for some stricter wording in the last meeting. Well, I guess I failed to realize I was informed by a citizen just recently that the word convey is in there. The Girls Club, for example, has had to move once already. If we wanted to take a little bit of area and put it aside, I believe that we wouldn't be able to do that because that would be conveying our property to some other organization's use. So I think we might need to strike the word convey. I don't know Mr. Gavin would that be restrictive in that situation?

It could be it depends on how I mean how short-term it was convey certainly if there's a long-term lease convey could be triggered it could run afoul of the term convey for sure So like you could open up City Hall for an event, a temporary event, that wouldn't be conveying it. But if there was a long-term lease for somebody to use City Hall, then that would likely be considered conveying.

So that might possibly stop the YMCA from ever happening.

Sure. I mean, this is really the unknown, right? The unknown of what this turns into. We know that in the vision session, we want it to be a downtown event. Council will have a lot of input in that, and so will the citizens. That's why you should make this a very strong ordinance. I think you should make it where it's supermajority unanimous. It needs to be something that we have to ensure that people want. I think even the people who may be speaking against this or wanting this on the charter, and there's no disrespect to them, I don't know if they fully understand the implications of their request, because it would make it more difficult for us to enter into a private partnership with a developer or a person. Developer doesn't mean just a big company. It means anybody who wants to spend money to, you know, appreciate real property. So whoever that may be with us, and we would have complete control if we owned the majority of the land. So we can accomplish that through BPUD. There's just so many avenues that we wouldn't want to, I don't know a Fortune 500 company or any company that would want to Restrict and handcuff themselves if they're looking to they need to grow a we have to grow We have no choice as a city. We need a new city complex. We needed a new police department Those are things that we're gonna have to happen in the future. There's no way around that So why would we want to restrict ourselves with with with these restrictions? Why not be flexible, but it needs to be something that's that's very strong so three people can't make that happen on the dice it should be four or five and to make sure it's the best for the community. And that's staff's perspective, and I think we could do a great job in the future of honoring that deed restriction to that footprint of the building. But this just makes it super restrictive and more challenging.

to make it unanimous, and if it happens to, something comes up 10 years from now when we're at 37,000 people, and there's six, it's still unanimous. Because if it were to happen that way, I'd like it to be unanimous, not four to one. I mean, this is probably one of the most important decisions we're ever gonna make, because sitting up here representing these people, we still don't know what we wanna do. Do we want it downtown or no? Didn't we have a, when I was on charter, geez, that was six years ago. I was on the Planning and Zoning Board and we had a meeting right here. Some company came out with beautiful pastels of look at this downtown. That's a long time ago. Nothing's happened with that. Is that what the residents even want? Do they want this to develop? And like I said at the other couple meetings, we keep buying property moving towards that luckily we could be realtors and flip that property but if we don't want to have a downtown we should i think we should stop especially if we might be losing five million dollars next year i think we should stop buying 150 000 lots and decide okay we're going to stay as we are If it was to go to a charter, I think the people should really have a vote instead of saying, we're not going to do anything. Or the MPUD kind of is attractive, where we can have a partnership like we saw in, what was that? That was Mount Dora. Mount Dora had a beautiful setup. It just worked out well for them. I think if we're going to go with a charter, which is restrictive, give the citizens two choices. We're not going to do nothing, or how about we'll do it like this? I just think a very strong, unanimous restriction on an ordinance would be a smarter way for the city to go. And somebody told me that this place never flooded. I don't think that's true.

I believe there were some I think the last one was Hurricane Matthew, I believe. What? I don't know.

Was it bad damage?

Yeah, I don't think it was significantly, you know, a foot of water. I think there was a water intrusion. I don't recall.

It was through the roof, I think, right?

Through the roof, and I don't know if it was, I know there was water damage. I mean, I don't know. I've been here 23 years.

I don't remember the actual city hall. It's never physically had water through the door. It came. I will tell you that I've seen pictures during 2022 is at the doorstep. Sure. I mean, it's certainly potential happening.

You know, the other concern other than those is, you know, you are playing growth is is out West by 95. right so we want to ensure that we develop redevelop this area so this area stays beautiful and we don't have a new city out there and nothing over here and really we don't want those people that are moving out west to drive down us-1 and pass everything in edgewater and go to canal street as beautiful as new smyrna is i'd rather have them here in edgewater so and that's something that we've been we've been talking about as a city The vision started with redevelopment of Park Avenue many, many, many years ago. And when you gave me the honor of taking the seat in June, I started proactively purchasing property through your authority to start accomplishing those goals. That does take a long time, but we are closer than many think. Great.

And just for the record, the property that we're purchasing is through CRA, so it's not costing taxpayer money. It's CRA money, so that's very fortunate as well.

I do agree with the fact of what Mr. Rainberg said, and I've said it time and time again, that there was a beautiful vision plan, like you said, that sat on the shelf for 20 years almost. So 2008 was a major vision plan. And of course, there was a recession, et cetera.

And we still don't know if that's what the people want.

Exactly. And our last one, I was hoping to have more public involvement, which it was great, but it was geared towards downtown. The 2008 vision, we had Several things come out of that, such as purchasing our new city hall property. The residents said that that's what they wanted. They wanted sidewalk improvements. There were several things that former management before Mr. Irby did in that plan and helped implement it even through the recession. So it sat on the shelf during one management. But you're right. There's not a strong plane in Edgewater. And that's my concern as well. But I do think that it was written and should be stuck to that way.

What did we end up spending? Do you remember for both vision sessions?

$100,000. $100,000 for the second one, $2,000. I have no idea.

I was kind of referring to the ones we had very recent. So it's $100,000 that we've spent. And we did two vision sessions. That way, we could have more people. Like you said, there was enough people who we felt were able to participate. So we opened it up again and did a whole other vision session. So we have $100,000 sitting on the shelf again. So at some point, council's going to need to say, okay, it may not be the vision session that, the vision that they gave us in 2025, but we, you know, we've invested $100,000. I just don't want to see that still on the shelf because we're undecisive on what the residents, they've spoke about what they'd like to have, and the ones that showed up had a lot of great ideas. So we can't discount, you know, all the hard work they also put into it.

If you remember correctly, we unanimously agreed, it was before Mr. Rainbird and Mr. Thomas got on the council, that we were going to have a vision board because there were several things that the plan was not finalized yet in 24, the end of 23 actually, sorry. And it was already approved before we got on the council budget-wise. We were going to have a board, and it was going to be made up of business leaders, potentially through the Economic Development Board, about what we were going to do and implement those plans through the vision session that came out of Kimberly Horne's plan. And we've never discussed that since. I brought it up a couple times on the dais and spoke to the city manager about it, but you're right. It just can't be wasted. And there was a lot of things on that resources. It was a numberized list saying we could do this, we could do this, we could do that, we could do that. and nothing's coming out of your right.

So that would be a good next step for us is to take that plan that you wanted to do and implement it and get a board together. That way we're at least moving forward on a vision. I think it's just so important just to not do anything. It's a shame. It's $100,000. And plus it's our future. It's Edgewater's future. And I think it's important to invest in our future. and through a private-public partnership, it'll be the city's land. We'll have control over it, but we'll have people investing in our city and give the residents a place that they can come and eventually go downtown and have shops and places to eat.

It's still the city's land, and then it doesn't have to be sold. And that's the dead horse they keep. The thing is, we can still build something here. We can still work and do projects, and we can still beautify this area and move forward with a visioning plan without selling this property.

No, I agree. I agree 110%. We shouldn't sell the property. But where will we get the money for the investment if we don't have a private-public partnership where someone decides to have a little spot and the city remains and control the land, but that private property owner, that private person invests in the city. Because I know that we are unable to create a downtown city by itself. I mean, we have so many infrastructure projects going on that should be always top of our list. I just want to keep this relevant and moving forward.

How did they do Mount Dora? John, can you explain to us how that?

If I could interject as well. It's even more important if we're uncertain. If we're uncertain of the vision we're taking, then we should be very cautious about moving forward and restricting something if we're unsure of what vision we're moving toward.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- The fiscal council said at a meeting that they were comfortable, like everybody agreed on the dais that we should put the deed back in the hands of people.

Look into it.

And that's, I just, it's concerning to me that this just keeps getting ping-ponged along. And I mean, even when you're talking about it now, Joe, I mean, you said that we'd still own the majority of the property. And that's why we would control it. You didn't say all of it, and that concerned me. And then talking about making money off of it. And then that's why we have residents that are saying, oh, are you guys going to sell it? And you guys are talking about it, saying like, oh, we could make this money off of it. That sounds like you're selling it, and that's a problem.

It would be the whole development. I think we could honor the spirit of the deed, and I think we could make a place that the public would vote in use.

The spirit of the deed was that it could never be sold, and that's what the charter amendment enshrines. I don't know, I just, I'm comfortable moving forward with it.

That's why I think we should let the people decide, give them column A or column B. Do you want to let some investment in here? Because I can't, we can't just let four or ten people on either side of anything decide what we're going to do. If you really want to let the people vote, let the people, hey, we could have cinnamon raisin or you could have chocolate. Why has it just got to be one thing? Because that's how you really let the people vote. If you want to let the people vote, We could do this, or we could do nothing. Because I would think that if, that's why I'd like you to explain how Mount Dora did that one building.

Maybe we should tighten up our vision plan and have the residents vote on it next election. If that's what they want or don't want, because they never had a strong voice or opinion. We went out and we talked to a thousand residents or so. I agree with that. I think that might be the way to go.

I agree with that, but the charter amendment as written doesn't allow any of that to happen. It says we're doing it, we're not doing it.

Well, you could just send, you could not forward the charter amendment and send a ballot question if you want to develop downtown, Park Avenue has downtown, just like we're doing with recycling.

Yeah, but we haven't, we haven't even, we have two separate visions. We haven't talked about the second vision in two and a half years now.

But we're about to end that discussion.

If we're going to move forward. You need to include the people. The people weren't included in the past. Two to three years, they need to be a member of what exactly they know they're going to vote on and something that they can see and look at. Kimberly Horne did a good job, but it just hasn't been discussed in two and a half years. It's gone nowhere.

And after that neglect of that being discussed, whoever forgot about that, we're going to move forward and say, you ain't doing it.

I'm all for it being voted on if there's going to be downtown or not, but I think there needs to be a vision implemented because right now we don't have a strong vision.

So we're about to do something. If you're realizing we didn't do anything, if you put this in the charter. I agree with where you're going, Mr. Mayor.

We have to have that vision. We don't have that vision. He's been at the dais.

All right. So in a nutshell, public and private partnership, ideally what you want to do is leverage your position to maximize the benefit through attracting private investment. So for example, as we're buying up the land around here, we're probably not going to be able to buy all of it. The land that we do buy, I certainly recommend that we hold it and control that in perpetuity. We can develop our property, whether it's storm retention or for infrastructure or anything else, but we control our property and make it more attractive or easier for developers to come in and buy the other property and develop it. And so we don't necessarily make our money by flipping the property, we make our money by increasing the value and attracting private investment that's going to generate property tax revenue. That's mainly what we're gonna get your money from is property tax revenue. And then of course sales tax and things like that. They know as far as conveying property or things like that, if we have something that we hold or a business wants to build there, definitely we'd ideally want to have a long-term lease. Because if we convey property or we start selling property 20 years down the road, something might happen. We might lose control over it. We want to get as much control over property as we can and maintain that control so we can leverage our position to attract the most amount of private investment as possible. And how that looks, that can be determined. There's a whole myriad of ways. that can be done and be accomplished. But in a nutshell, that's what you're looking at.

So what is that building in Mount Dora? Was that a place where they rent out to have events and weddings?

Yeah, that's a very common one that a lot of cities do is a community center.

Like a Brandon Center.

It'll look like a mall. Courts and things like that in the back. Mount Dora and also Claremont, one thing that we really want to look at there is how they tied in their waterfront and so they would do projects where they would develop you know access to the waterfront for you know olympic swimmers or whatever in claremont and they would then attract private companies that have businesses that sold sporting goods and things like that so there's just a whole myriad of ways that you can structure a private partnership but but is any of that land sold every now and then it is but for the most part cities try to hold and maintain control of the property that they own for as long as possible You can sell it and flip it if that's what you have to do. The idea is that we want to maintain flexibility in how we structure those deals. Sometimes we might have to sell. Sometimes we lease and hold it. Sometimes we develop the infrastructure on it. Sometimes we actually build a building like a Civic Center.

All right So we're so we're we're getting into the what-ifs here and what other communities has done and that's great That really is but right now we're talking about the city of Edgewater and do we want to change the Charter Amendment to where? It could be back to the original deed where it can't be barter barter sold or traded So let's get back to that conversation and not what other towns has done in the past. There's several public-private partnerships. I'm sure there's several communities that have sold their land that city has owned, such as surplus properties and things like that. There's several cases of public-private partnership. We know that. We know the potential. We went to other communities. Let's talk about this parcel and let's get back to this topic.

Well, Mr. Mayor, I'm addressing what you brought up now about a vision that we paid for and didn't follow through on.

decision we're about to make here like makes that possible or impossible it doesn't make it impossible so you can't sell the land he just said there's part there's partnerships that where they don't sell the land but i mean just the fact that you're saying you want the flexibility in case you want to sell it that concerns me even more because the true nature of it was it for it to never be sold and that's the i I feel strongly about that. If I wasn't on council, I'd be one of the people out there picketing and complaining because that's what it was originally needed for, and that's how it was supposed to stay. And I don't think it was right what they did before. And I don't know. I'm getting spicy. It was because I think that Even for people in the future who would want to do it. If I had a house on Riverside and I was like, oh, I want to donate this to be a park for the future forever. And then you guys come back and then what? How many years pass? And you're like, okay, we want to go sell that now that we're talking about parks moving forward to the ballot. Not a park, but what have you. But I want this donated to the city for public use. Okay, so I die. 50 years goes by and you're like, okay, we can sell it now.

That's not cool. That is not okay. And I'm not directing that at you.

That's just everything in general. You should be up there talking about the topic. This one hits me in what's right and wrong. This is just, I just think it needs to go to the people so it can be protected because it should have been put back with the deed itself by our hand back this way. And if it's not been done that way, I see why they're moving forward with the chartering. It's still not getting done.

I totally agree. I totally agree that it should stay to the people. But if you leave us a house and when you die, it's still going to be that house. Nobody's going to do anything here without having some kind of stake in it. It's going to stay this building because you got the, again, the old tag office. They bought that, correct?

I believe so.

I'm not sure it's a lease. It's gonna stay that. That whole Canal Street is gorgeous, and then you got that tag office. For some reason, it's still that tag office. You leave a house to the city, and you don't let anybody touch it, it's gonna remain that house in the city. And yes, I want our property to remain our property, but we need to allow people to use.

I'm talking about the land. People want to see this area. If we take this down and build a community center and do something else for public versus, what people don't want is somebody to come in and try to build some condos or some dumb crap.

But that will be in our control. Oh, you want to come in here and be a partner for condos? No. Oh, you want to come in here and be a partner for a marine science center or an Autobahn society, some type of, I mean.

But you still don't have to sell the land. This is about the selling the parcel.

Mr. Thomas, did you have a comment before?

Mr. Scott? Thank you. If you put this in the charter, you're losing all your options. You're handcuffing yourself behind your back. So I agree with I think it was wrong, how it was done. But looking into the future, I think there's some things that might be unseen. And why handcuff yourself behind your back? Why not leave all the options open? You may want to keep it forever.

I don't care.

I like it like that. I think I don't want to be handcuffed. I want my options open where I can make a correct decision at that time. Of course, I won't be here, but somebody else can make the decision.

We still have options without selling the land. I mean, I'm beating a dead horse.

It's just... Charlotte, what do you think some options would be then? I'm totally against selling the land. I'm putting that out there right now. I don't want to see this property sold.

You just said that there was public-private partnerships where they don't sell the land.

It's about the flexibility.

You want the flexibility to sell, which is the concern.

no listen i want the i want the lex first of all like i said before is a genuine comment we are lacking a clear vision but when we talk about the deed restriction of the building that is the police department next door okay if we were to incorporate that into the redevelopment that we are getting a community center because right now the public does not have a community center here They have this council chambers to meet during business meetings, planning and zoning meetings, but they don't have a community center. They have no real purpose on this parcel like that deed restriction originally had. So we have to make sure that we honor, because the deed restriction is gone, right? It's removed. but we have the responsibility in my opinion to honor a community center the similar size if not bigger than that police department because that's what that family left us now if that if that means that in this public private partnership we have to say hey we need to sell uh we need to divide subdivide this this parcel and we need to sell a piece over here to accomplish something and then in turn get a community center over here That's just not handcuffing yourself. That's being flexible in future redevelopment. That's all I'm saying there. I think that needs to be honored of what that family left to us as a city.

What's going to happen if you do put past this and it goes in the charter and Mr. Rambert says give it to the people and the majority of the people say, yeah, we want it downtown down there. What are you going to do then? You know?

and still build a town.

Keep your options open.

How will we build a downtown? I mean, I'm curious, there would be no private investors. How would how would the city build a downtown with no with no one to invest in us to do it? Where would that where would the funds come from?

if we want a downtown.

No, I'm asking Charlotte so we can still do it. But if you say we can still do it, which I appreciate, if you say we can still build it without a public-private partnership and still give the downtown or Main Street, whatever it may be called, where will we get the funds for the city to build it?

Well, he just said that we can do them without selling the land.

I'm 100% agreement. It's public-private partnership is what you're talking about, which I'm for. But that's not the city building it. It's the city having a private-public partnership with someone who will invest.

Here's the here's what it comes down to is we don't have a strong vision plan I do know what the original deed read and I am in favor returning it back to the original language because that's what they wished But here's what it comes down to the very last City Council meeting we it was three to two to support an ordinance move forward instead of a charter amendment, of course I support an ordinance and to do something strong. So are we on that topic or are we on a charter review? Because I believe, Mr. Rainbird, you brought it up at our budget workshop that you wanted to make sure that the partial ID number was in there. And I think that the partial ID number is in this ballot language. But if this does not move forward, I would still like consensus to have a ordinance regardless of a supermajority. Sure. To not sell. So is there consensus to move forward with the ballot amendment for residents to vote on question six? I give consensus.

I give concession to let the people vote.

Which one? Yes. It is. Follow me. To move forward to let the people to vote on the ballot question six. I gave consensus to move forward to let the people vote on a ballot initiative.

I give consensus for the ballot initiative.

There was consensus for that. Is there a third? Okay, it fails. How about a motion for a supermajority to be, or an ordinance saying that you cannot sell this land, barter sale or trade, without a supermajority vote of the council?

I would also like to see if we're going to go that route, maybe we can add something to it about, because we want to honor the family, the property that was given to the city. Is there a way we can have the strong majority and put something in it, well, private public partnership would work or have some examples of how it won't be sold. We'll be working in conjunction with someone maintaining the property.

Of course, staff can work on an ordinance. There's no imminent sale occurring either, right? The council's seated right now. You're not going to want to vote to sell the property. I have no intention to sell the property. It's the city side of things. So this is something we can talk about. But you all want the options open. we could bring forward an ordinance that you could see on the first draft and then add even harsher or stronger language. So of course we could. And we will do so.

I had one other thought that I had the other day. If I died and left my son my 64 Impala and he sold it and bought a brand new Lamborghini, I'd be like, hell yeah, kid. I'm not saying we want to sell it, but if I left it to my son and he was like, yeah, but I can do this, I still think the NPUD thing is a great idea. It gives us control without selling. Like Charlotte said, don't sell it.

We'll bring a very strong ordinance forward that either is supermajority or unanimous, and that will be discussed at future meetings, but we will bring that forward.

Right now, question six has failed. I'm question 7 prohibit of data centers prohibition of data centers ballot summary shall the city of Edgewater be of evidence to prohibit the approval construction or operation of the data center within the city limits prohibit the city from issuing development approvals or permits for such facilities as required no ordinance or comprehensive plan of them that authorized data centers unless first approved by the voters in the municipal referendum. item proposed charter provision a no new data center shall be permitted approved or construction expanded or operated within the city b the city commission shall not adopt any ordinances approve any development order issue any permits any approve any comprehensive plan amendment to take any action authorizing a data center c purpose proposes of the section data center means a facility a group of facilities primarily designed or used to house computer servers Networking equipment and related infrastructure for data storage cloud computing artificial intelligence computing cryptocurrency mining collection services or digital processing activities a section is self Excusing any ordinance resolution developing order permit or approval inconsistent with this section is void this section may be amended or repealed only by the approval of the electors voting in a municipal referendum

Council comments and staff report so staff concerns nobody wants a or I should say staff nobody would want a mega data center So the only concern is the definition and size of a future data center may change and evolve as technology advances. So staff does recommend putting in an ordinance and staff does recommend creating a temporary moratorium for the building of new data centers. But as a charter amendment, it is restrictive. Nobody wants the current definition of a data center right now in Edgewater. So I'll leave that for your discussion.

Could somebody please explain to me what a data center is?

Well, a data center is a... Basically a large building, stereotypically a large building, hosting computers, essentially servers, to transmit information for various means. It could be for artificial intelligence, it could be for cryptocurrency mining.

What would be the pros and cons of a data center?

There's a lot of different narratives.

No public participation at this time, please.

There are a lot of different narratives right now, but they are presumed to be large users of water and electricity.

Water and what?

Large consumers of water and electricity.

The computers get really hot and they have to use water to cool them.

And that's a con, so what would a pro be to have one? Well, you would get.

Somebody from the peanut gallery is gonna say tax dollars.

Taxes or something.

I mean, you would get revenue. I just, it's a very hot topic across the nation, data centers. There's a lot of information about them. It's relatively a new technology. I think there's somewhere around 793, don't quote me to the exact amount, in design or construction throughout the United States right now, is to expand artificial intelligence as technology advances.

And if we were to allow one, where could they put it?

Well, I'd have to rely on Mr. Solstice for that exact location.

That's up for them to decide.

Well, I mean, typically they're in industrial and commercial areas.

You have to go into a commercial area.

Typically they are located in industrial or commercial zoning areas, not residential. But the challenge is sometimes they're next to residential and then there is a noise component that is one of the reasons they're... There's concerns about them, too, because they run 24-7. So they have a... Thank you. That's something people have said. I don't know. I haven't heard one.

4,000 to approximately 5,500 data centers in the United States. There's a lot of municipalities that are facing this issue right now, one down south, one in a separate state, and I do know that the residents have been together to hopefully ban the data center because it is near a residential area, so it can't happen anywhere in the community. And as Mr. Rollins stated, and the city manager as well, very noisy, and it does take a lot of our resources.

Thank you for the explanation. There's a lot of disinformation.

Basically, it's one giant computer server.

Yeah. We do need them. What? Right, not in my backyard. We're going to get left behind. This country is getting left behind if we don't. We haven't built a refinery since 1973, and that's why our gas is so expensive. There's oil all over the place, but your vehicle don't run on oil. The United States, the EPA, all these standards, they're building oil refineries all over the world. We ship our oil to Japan and to Venezuela. They refine it to our gasoline. We do need data centers. They don't output sludge. People say, no, they output sludge. It's like your radiator on your car. They take in water to cool the components. It circulates around. It's sealed. They are open. We can make rules where they're closed. But we don't need it here. There's enough data centers for now. I'm just trying to put this out there that we do need them. They do have a purpose. The rest of the world is leaving us behind again. and they don't put out sludge, no. But we don't need it here. Like I said at the last, I don't think we have the room to put one.

My biggest concern is that we don't know the long-term health effects of data centers. Oh, it's a big EMF for sure. Near residential areas because there's not enough studies in on them. It does take a lot of our natural resources. It takes a lot of our water, a lot of our power. We necessarily need to conserve what we have already because Aquifer has been a big concern that we hear on the dais that we've talked about before and that we see in our community of our residents talking about how to preserve the aquifer. So I just don't think Edgewater is a great place for this. We've taken a stance on several things and I think we need to make sure that our residents are safe and that there is not going to be a data center near any kind of residential homes or anywhere in the city of Edgewater.

I agree. We don't know what they'll look like in five to ten years, but right now, it's not something that I want to see. You know, the resources, the water, the electricity it takes, and like you said, living next to industrial, next to a home, next to a residential, the noise and the pollution and the possible side effects years down the road, We don't know, and we don't know what they're going to look like in 10 years. Maybe in 10 years they'll fit into the size of this room and have all kinds of coils and they'll be self-sufficient. I don't know. We don't know. But today, I definitely don't want to see data centers anywhere in Edgewater. I know they're important, and you're right. We have to keep up or get left behind. But I really don't feel also that we have the place for one that's safe. Out west, you know, there's no place for one, and I don't want to see, and I've had a lot of residents reach out, and that was the hot topic, data centers. So I don't want to see one in our city, and I know everyone I've spoken with is on that same page.

So is there consensus to move forward with a charter amendment that would ban data centers in the city of Edgewater?

I would like to give consensus for the charter amendment moving forward, but I would also see, as Joe wrote up, I would like to see if we could work on putting a temporary moratorium up until the time that that goes through. So nobody could try to come in before that and try to push one through before the amendment hopefully passes. Good idea. We talked about that last meeting.

When could that be voted upon? As soon as our next council meeting?

That's August 3rd, if staff could prepare that in time.

Yeah, as long as the notice and advertising and all that is... I forget the exact news cycle advertising in the public news.

I certainly give consensus for that as well. So there will be consensus to hear a temporary moratorium banning data centers at our next city council meeting. And I think there was unanimous, Mr. Thomas, I don't think I saw you shake your head, for data centers to be banned in the city of Edgewater for our residents to vote.

We can't have a vote or first vote on the moratorium right now.

We would need an ordinance and there would have to be public comment. So, okay, we'll be at our August meeting. So question one moves forward to the ballot. Question two moves forward. Question three failed and will be revisited as an ordinance. Question four will be revisited as an ordinance. Question five passes and moves forward. Question six was discussed to have an ordinance, supermajority to change or sell or barter or trade. And question seven moves forward to the charter vote unless we have citizens comments to change the opinion and then we will move forward with a vote and move forward with these charter amendment items how is that how is that standing as far as the uh the ordinance it's super majority and not unanimous was that the consensus i would like to see it be unanimous

i'm fine with unanimous you'll have the opportunity to make that modification we bring it forward too at the first reading we can decide so we can still change that to unanimous correct yeah with an ordinance you can always amend it greatly as long as it doesn't substantively change the notice given to the public so you can't be like hey it's an ordinance on banning alligators and then suddenly it becomes um whales are now banned or you know that's silly example but it can't fundamentally change but if you're adding or taking away the amount the vote or whatever that those tweaks you can do on first reading and then second reading without any issue and having to re-advertise thank you sir open a public hearing citizens comments

Robert DeVoe, 232 North Ridgewood Avenue.

I'm speaking on myself in our HOA. Your data centers and stuff, I've been around them. And if you want to know, it's like, look at your rivers and a lot of your aquifer stuff here now are going down. Your springs and everything are down. It's like putting a fire hose in your kid's swimming pool to drain it. I know we're surrounded by water here. And Kathy Holgo from New York is implementing for her state not to have any in her state. And I hope Ron DeSantis would do that for Florida. Because Edgewater is not Jacksville. It's not Tampa. It's not Miami. It's not Orlando and stuff like that. We don't have the water resource. Our water is bad enough, I'm sorry, as it is. And we don't have the grid for it. And if you want to know what they sound like, Go and get an air conditioner from the top of Publix and put it in your living room. They're loud as crap. For the infrastructure, you're talking about, I don't know, is Deering Park going to be part of this city or Edgewater development or whatever, our city? So we're going to get the taxes off that? OK. If it's coming in, if there's 15,000 people that buy out there, so the city council is going to expand to seven or eight people? Am I correcting that on that? OK. And two, if you want to have a downtown here on Park Street, you have nothing but mobile home and boat storage. They're very nice, I must say. They're very nice. You have buildings there that have a number of different offices, car repairs and everything else, AC company that has a bunch of AC units on the outside, and a roofing company that parks all their trucks around there. That's not a Canal Street look. That's not a pretty look for Edgewater. I'm sorry. And for this building here, if you need more room, why don't you move the police department to the Badcock building? It's sitting there vacant for long enough. Or if the city's building, if that's big enough for the city building, I don't know how much square footage y'all need. If it's big enough, move your building there. Have your police department here. That's just my thought.

Thank you, sir, for your comments. I appreciate it.

This is getting late for me. Where'd he go? Linda Mosier, 319 Leaning Oak Drive. This is what I'm reading, what I've just handed out, with some notes on the back when we're all done here. So, as you well know, city council is routinely presented with citizens' comments that express individual frustrations, particularly related to managed growth, overdevelopment, and environmental concerns. You're not alone. More often than not, those three-minute citizens' comments come far too little too late in the process, and the city is already past the point of no return. As the state continues to chip away at home rule, it will only get harder for cities to govern in their own local best interests. Working with the community in advance to generate support for managed growth is effective and worthwhile. A quick search of the term community engagement sources the National Civic League with the statement, the integration of community engagement into city charters is a critical aspect of effective governance, not just as a set of activities, but a way of communication, decision-making, and governance that empowers community members who own the change they want to see. I'm here tonight to simply share some added background for comparison and ask that you reconsider the original intent of the suggested charter amendment that was not advanced the last two weeks ago, and then let the voters decide yes or no, if they would like to see more proactive community engagement initiated by the city. What was proposed back in March was that a new section one item be added to the charter 103 1.03, community engagement. To support collaborative managed growth, the city shall be proactive in offering meaningful opportunities for community members to bring issues, concerns, and priorities to city officials and to engage in the early development stages of city policy, ordinances, and actions. Enhanced methods of informing and educating the public regarding city issues shall be deemed a public purpose for which city funds may be expended. Go ahead. Gavin hated me because I was always late into the last minute into the meeting. So back in March, when it was first starting, I was vexing him.

Definitely did not hate you. You had great input.

I vexed you. So as prepared for council consideration two weeks ago, the Q11 item was presented for charter insertion in between 1.01J, sale of city park property, and 101L, sale of city hall. And it follows. He said, in the interest of time, I'm not going to reread it. You all saw it. It was presented. So on the question, you have the original shorter version I just read. And then on the ballot summary, there are strikethroughs regarding expenditures. And I said, I know it's late in the process, but I would like to have this, I would have prepared this on the 6th if I'd been expected to bring this level of detail to you. So thank you for giving it another shot. If you want to take another look at community engagement before you go forward, that would be great.

Thank you, Ms. Moser, for your comments. I appreciate it. Okay, is there a motion for question one to move forward, question two to move forward, and question seven to move forward?

Would you guys be willing to revisit having the community engagement come back?

Yes, I was just thinking that. And my concern when we read it the first time was that it's so vague. But I guess being vague in the charter is sometimes a good thing. It can be interpreted in certain ways. And once it's in charter, then it could it could grow in time as the city grows and the needs grow so i i do see and i that was my main concern when we we passed it by that it's just so vague it doesn't give any true direction it just says you know community engagement doesn't say how um but but i i think that would be something that that i would be willing to talk about as well can somebody define it a little bit better though

because I get phone, I'm driving around for work every day, I get phone calls all the time, I get emails from people, I get concerns from citizens. I'll either call Joe or forward them to Joe, Joe acts on them. People are free to come here for meetings. How many empty seats are there? That's not engagement. I just think we need more people involved. Facebook doesn't cut it because there's so many people calling me names on Facebook that aren't even real accounts They just started on Facebook three weeks ago, and they're calling me names, so that's not engagement. I totally agree with engagement, but how do we do it better?

Welcome to the club.

Huh? I said welcome to the club. Well, yeah, but how do we, I get it. I agree. But how?

How do we divide?

We can't even get people to show, well, I mean, look at this. This is supposedly some of the biggest decisions we ever made. We still don't, hey, Edgewater, we still don't know what the vision is for the city hall, but there's nobody here. So I would love some more engagement,

just if you guys could brainstorm and like I guess that's the language that it's that we are encouraging a website and Linda and I talked and possible you know linking Facebook the city website to the Facebook so it's easier for for people to find things but at some point people will need to know how to go to the city website and find things but I don't know, I really appreciate the language, and it was just so very vague. It didn't give any direction on where or how it would look or what it would look like. And that was where I was like, oh, it doesn't say what we're gonna do.

But the other ballot amendments people shot down was shot down because everybody said it was too restrictive and had too much teeth, so I mean.

And here's another thing. The city of Edgewater does have a couple Facebook pages. And somebody said, why don't you let people reply?

I have an idea and a solution to potentially this. We have a new PIO officer. Why don't we, you know, we don't control employee direction, but why don't we make sure that written in community engagement that the city manager takes proactive social media engagements like you spoke about and how to get to the City of Edgewater website and thanks to that degree that we know exactly what our PI officer has put out, we could change exactly, you know, Mr. Rainbird, I remember you bringing up not too long ago that there was, I think, state statute only states that you have to have, what is it, four or 500 feet of a development or a new home or a variance for the surrounding neighbors to know. It's a small could that be considered community engagement if we could we have an ordinance to potentially vamp that that it has to be within a half mile to a mile of each other and that would be considered i even bought up an email going to the hoa so that everybody in the like if a lot if you'd like staff can can come back with some recommendations

At my manager's report for August, I'm going to go through our new capital project dashboard to explain to the public how to get there and look at all the projects in motion. So we can definitely come back with some recommendations. If you want an ordinance form, I think you could do that. But we can just come up with a program that y'all can modify at will, just with some direction. But we can come back with ideas.

So we can revisit this? Of course.

But I guess what Linda's asking is if we would consider putting it on the ballot is what she's asking and not an ordinance.

I have no problem moving forward, but it is very, very, very vague. I'm always for community engagement. Right. I think that there has to serve some purpose because basically what it's saying is just you have to be, you have to make sure that the city is engaging with its residents. And as Councilman Rainberg said, looking at how many people are here tonight, so how do we define what we, why that charter amendment was passed and what do we do moving forward. There has to be some kind of goals and measurements if we're gonna put it on the ballot, is all I'm saying. Community engagement is great, but what are we gonna do with that exact ballot language? yes it does absolutely but i understand that but right now i'm sure the city manager pio officer would say well we're engaged in the community we're we're trying to get it out there as much as we possibly can we post on social media we post on our city website so what is going to change about that ballot amendment i think miss moser had a point that she wanted to make sure that it's correct me if i'm wrong engaging even more than what we're doing right now. So what's going to come out of that ballot amendment? Because it's so vague. The city manager, not saying, just using this for an example, and the PI officer can say, look, we're engaged every month. Here's what we've done. So what exactly is going to change? Absolutely. I think it should be on the ballot. I think we should, the residents should vote for it. But what measures are going to come out of it if we put it on the ballot? That's all I'm saying. I'll allow you, you were on the charter review, so if you'd like to come up and speak, let's just try to keep it under five minutes if you could.

You're late.

No, really. No, I appreciate all of those concerns. And I think that we certainly had these discussions in the charter review committee. And very often, our end result was, we can't really figure out exactly how this is going to land. Put it in front of the voters and let them decide. Are the voters going to say they want more community engagement, and are they going to take part in that? they may say yes they may say no and if they say no then yeah we don't have to do anything but if they say yes and then we have some develop some programs that are not just simply giving them three minutes in front of city council or checking off a box when we send them a postcard or just doing very basic things that are not that are they're not push actions, they are reactions.

But what are those actions? I'm not trying to be argumentative here, and I'm not trying to go back and forth, I know, but you're on the Charter Review, and I think you brought this forward, right? Yes. Okay, but you say you want the measurements other than those, but what else can we do that would be the language in this charter amendment? I'm all for the residents voting, absolutely, and I think that the people who are most certainly going to say community engagement, that's 100% checkbox. But we've got to have some form of what's going to come out of that amendment is just what I'm saying. Because if you press community engagement, like I said, they're just going to say, look, we've done it. We've tried.

And you've already got a handle on that. You've already said that there's going to be a new public information officer.

She's already here.

If that person is going to have that part added, to her job description, and then she is given, or is it a she? I'm sorry.

It is a she.

OK, sorry. And she runs with this and comes up with those ideas and implements those ideas. Fabulous. That's wonderful. But that is yet to be determined. The thing that you're trying to fix is the thing that I've been here for the last, it's a year now, of things trying to come back and say, well, I didn't know this, and I didn't know that, and I didn't know the other. And it wasn't my fault. And I'm a big one for taking blame. So I feel like I've done lots of research in how to engage on my own, and it's still hard.

So can you give us the resources to add in the amendment of what you had to do and how you had to see it and what you would recommend because I just think that it's a great measurement, absolutely, but I just really want it to be something strong that's going to add merit.

All I'm suggesting is that commitment. Is the city willing to put it into the charter that they're committed to engaging their community more actively? than it has been.

It's almost like the preamble. It's not actually a rule and a law, but it's stating what could be and what we expect and what we would like.

Well, I think it's great. I just think that it's vague and that potentially maybe we could add in there that the city of Edgewater will always have a public information officer. I don't think we have that in our city charter. So, you know, there's other measurements that could come from this ordinance. yes you're right i agree but but isn't it our job already to make sure that we're supposed to be doing this anyway and getting the getting it out there so my question is as a resident what can we do better other than just saying all we want community engagement it's our job all of us to make sure that we're trying to get community engagement every day i get that as well and it's not exactly the same but it's adjacent

to the discussion you were having about whether or not something went forward as an ordinance or this amendment is that, yeah, there have been lots of good intentions. We intend to do all these things. We intend to make our land use Better.

But we haven't done it.

I'm fine with it moving forward. So that's why the charter review things were so specific and so detailed. And then a lot of them got pushed aside and say, yes, we'll make those into an ordinance. And that's fine. But the reason that came forward is because it hadn't been done, despite everybody's good intentions. We all know how hard you guys are working and trying to do the best you can. What now? Not for this. Not for this.

I'm more than happy with this to move forward. It should be our jobs every day. I just meant that if there was another step that we could go above and beyond.

I'm not even suggesting that people are not doing their jobs. I just think we could all do a little harder of our own jobs to stay connected.

So Madam Clerk, could you read that into the record, which question that was? And is there consensus to have that move forward?

If you guys are moving forward with this, what I would recommend is making a motion to add this into the ordinance on charters. And then that way, if you're putting this on the charter, was it on the charter or an ordinance?

It was on the charter to begin with.

Into the charter. So this is the charter enabling. So I would, this ordinance as a whole, you're going to pass with the ones you decided to move forward with. So I would move this into the ordinance, this ordinance, and then pass the whole ordinance.

So how should the motion read?

just a motion to add the question 11 the community engagement piece as discussed and presented um and then just maybe read the the language um into the record so is there a motion for that yeah i make a motion to add this to are we adding to the charter um You're adding it to the ordinance, which will then be passed with the ones you chose to move forward with as a whole package.

With the ordinance, as Gavin stated. The city council shall adopt and maintain an ordinance establishing a community engagement and public information program to provide residents meaningful opportunities to present issues, concerns, and priorities to the city officials and to participate in development of city policies, ordinance programs, and actions. The city may expend public funds for community engagement activities and for informing and educating the public regarding municipal issues, policies, programs, and services. And such expenditures are declared to serve a valid municipal and public purpose.

Second, Rain Bird. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas? No. Councilwoman Dalbo? Yes. Councilman Rainbird?

Yes.

Mayor DePue? Yes. Councilwoman Gillis? Yes.

Okay, is there a motion for question one to move forward, question two to move forward, question six, I'm sorry, question seven to move forward? Is there a motion? actually let me rephrase that is there a motion to approve question one a motion to approve question two a motion to approve question five and question seven and then the recently added question 11. recently added question 11. and i know that's a little confused the only reason for that is because the ordinance basically labels out all the different

charter amendments and how they're going to be put on there so that's why you're adding it to that ordinance and then passing it as a package and then the second ordinance you're going to discuss after that is just a referendum that's non-binding so that's why it's separate and kind of out of out of the uh enabling ordinance is there a motion to approve make a motion to approve first reading ordinance number 2026-0-18 proposed charter ballot language

One, two, five, seven, and I recently added 11.

Second, Rainberg. Roll call.

And before, real quick, sorry. If you're okay with it, if you guys, by consensus, what we'll do is on the second reading, we'll clean it up so there are one through seven or however many total there are. Change the numbers. The only reason it had the different numbers is because that's how it came from the charter committee originally, but we'll clean that up so it's very, and that'll be how it'll appear on the ballot.

Great.

Mm-hmm. Councilman Thomas? Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo? Yes. Councilman Rainbird? Yes. Mayor DePue? Yes. Councilwoman Gillis? Yes.

On an IB resolution 2026-R-25, fire assessment fee, staff report.

I think we missed the, if he didn't.

Yeah, there was the non-binding resolution on the recycling. I don't have that on my agenda.

I don't have that on my agenda.

Is that added? It was added as 9B. It's the proposed recycling foul language.

Item 9, public hearing ordinances and resolutions. Item 9A, it's not on here either. Item 9A, first reading ordinance number 2026-0-18. No. Sorry, I don't have a mic.

If you just go off the PowerPoint and go through the actual agenda, please. Yeah, your time.

Is that it this morning?

Well, she's pulling that up. I can kind of give the legal. So that's basically, I think you guys wanted to get feedback in putting on the charter questions and non-binding resolution that gets feedback. It won't have a legal binding precedent, but it's a great way to see how the voters feel about a particular issue. And it's definitely legal as long as it's not on a land use issue. You can't put land use referendums on the ballot to bind, but you can on other topics.

In the language brought forward by Mister Sabatini's law firm is all city utility customers currently pay for the municipal recycling program, which has an annual operating cost of approximately $1.1 million. Although only approximately one half of residents participate in an effort to reduce overall utility fees for the city of Edgewater residents should the city discontinue providing municipal curbside recycling collection services.

Thank you, sir. Staff report.

That was it, Mr. Mayor. We are seeking a motion to approve.

Okay, open public hearing citizens comments. Council comments. Think this is great. Hall residents should vote. Is there a motion to approve?

I gotta wait till I see it. That's okay. That's okay. Make a motion to approve B2620260-19 first reading ordinance proposed recycling ballot language.

second rainbird roll call councilman thomas yes councilwoman dalbo yes councilman rainbird yes mayor depew yes councilwoman gillis yes item 9b resolution number 2026 test r-25 fire assessment fee staff report good evening mayor and council the resolution before you is for the annual fire assessment resolution 2026 r-25 for fire assessment fee where the city council approved the first fiscal year of fire services assessment in fiscal year 23 that would be imposed against real property for the purpose of paying for fire protection services. Staff is recommending continuation of fire services assessment for fiscal year 27. The initial fire assessment resolution sets the tone for the assessment and provides for purpose and definition for the various terms associated with the program. Once adopted, notification to property owners the City of Edgewater will be sent via first class mail as part of the annual trim truth and millage notice. Fire assessment fee would be imposed until discontinued or changed. The fire services assessment rates currently $50 per dwelling unit, same recommendation. The non-residential commercial property use categories is based on a rate per square foot capped at 97,000 square feet. Commercial at 3 cents, industrial warehouse 1 cent, and institutional 5 cent per square foot. Estimated gross revenue for fiscal year 26-27 is $731,570. the estimated exempt buy down is 38 858 and collection cost of 50 942 for an estimated net realized revenue of 641 771 dollars recommended action by staff is motion to approve resolution 2026 r-25 thank you open a public hearing citizens comments council comments

I'm happy that we're able to keep it the same as last year, flat.

Is there a motion to approve?

Make a motion to approve 2026-R-25 fire assessment rate for fiscal year 27 as of 06-28-2026. Second, Rainberg. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas. Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird. Yes. Mayor Depew. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

Item 10, board appointments, none at this time. Item 11, other business, 11A, accepting the Florida Inland Navigation District fine, waterways assistance program funding, if awarded, staff report.

Mayor, council, the city of Edgewater is applying for grant funding through the Florida Inland Navigation District waterways assistance program. For the new boat ramp and amenities, Phase 2 project, the proposed project includes construction of a new public boat ramp facility with boat ramps, floating docks, trailer parking, police boat docking, utility improvements, lighting, and related site amenities. The total estimated project cost is $5.45. $5,450,000 if awarded fine would provide up to a 50% of the eligible project costs with the city responsibility for the main balance and ongoing operation and maintenance of the facility. Approval of this resolution authorizes submission of the grant application and acceptance of the grant funding if awarded. Seek a motion to accept.

Thank you, sir. Open a public hearing. Citizens comments. Council comments.

So this is for phase two? Yes, ma'am.

A 50-50 match. That is correct. The boat ramp project is somewhat complicated. We're trying to stagger grants to reduce the city's match and I'm not exactly sure how that will turn out yet, but working for an echo grant as well, find, and then also the Port Authority tax eventually. So we're hoping to have minimal impact on city funds.

It's fabulous. Thank you.

It's great. I'm very glad that we're proactive in this measurement. Thank you to Buddy Davenport for all he does for the City of Edgewater and our management team for going after this grant. Is there a motion to approve?

Make a motion to approve. Accepting the Florida Inland Navigation District funding, if awarded, to 026-R-15.

Second, Rainberg. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas. Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird.

Yes.

Mayor DePue. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

I'm 11B, Maxlin Levy, Edgewater Operating, fiscal year 2026 to 2027. Staff report.

Good evening again, Mayor and Council. This evening, I am asking for Mayor and Council, in conjunction with the notice of proposal, Notice of proposed property taxes or trim notice pursuant to section 200.069 Florida statute. Council must authorize advertisement of the maximum millage rate for the upcoming budget year. The current operating millage is 6.33 per 1,000 of assessed value. The current taxable value is $2,300,000. $360,128,081. The current year rollback millage rate is 6.1165 per 1,000 of assessed value. With the current year rollback rate, the preliminary ad valorem tax for fiscal year 2027 would be $13,713,937 at a 95% collection rate. At the current year millage rate of $6.33 per thousand of taxable value, it would produce an estimated $14,192,630 at a 95% preliminary ad valorem taxes. budget that was presented at the july 8th workshop was based on the 6.33 military what we need from council this evening is to authorize the city of edgewater operating maximum millage to be advertised as part of the 2026 trim notice thank you open a public hearing citizens comments council comments this is tremendous so we're keeping it flat as years prior great job bridget you do a lot thank you community so team

Is there a motion to approve?

Make a motion to approve the Maximillage Levy for Edgewater Operating Fiscal Year 2026-2027 at 3.66. Second, Rainbird. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas. Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird.

Yes.

Mayor DePue. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

11C, Maximum Millage Edgewater INS 2016, fiscal year 2026 to 2027. Staff report.

So again, mayor and council, the maximum millage for the INS 2016, this millage is for the general obligation debt issued in 2016 for the GO, or general obligation for parks project. In conjunction with the notice of proposed property taxes, or trim notice, section 200.069 of Florida statute, Council must authorize advertisement of the maximum millage rate for the upcoming budget year. The current year Edgewater INS 2016 Gopher Parks millage rate is 0.1129 per thousand assessed value. For fiscal year 2027, the millage rate levy should be 0.1050 per thousand assessed value based on the sale of the limited general obligation note payable of 2017. The revenues for the fiscal year 2027 would be budgeted in the amount of $235,423. Council to authorize Edgewater INS 2016 maximum millage to be advertised as part of the 2026 trim notice at 0.1050 per thousand of assessed value.

Thank you, ma'am. Open to public hearing, citizens' comments.

Robert DeVoe, 232 North Bridgewood Avenue. If the property tax referendum goes through, how's that going to affect the fire department and everything else here for the city?

Well, right now, this is your time to comment to us. This isn't necessarily supposed to be back to force, but it's going to be around a $7 million deficit moving forward all throughout the community, so it'll affect us a lot as a whole. Okay, that's what I want to know. Thank you. $5 to $7 million is what the quarterly use of these test dates. Is there a motion to approve?

Make a motion to approve the maximum millage for Edgewater INS 2016 fiscal year 2026 2027 0.1050 per assessed value. Second. Roll call.

Councilman Thomas. Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird.

Yes.

Mayor DePue. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

I'm 11D. Accept the Firefighter Assistance Grants Program if awarded for the purchase of six sets of firefighters turnout gear to replace the gear that is expired. Staff report.

Mayor Council, the city is applying for grant funding through the Florida Department of Financial Services Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program to replace six sets of expired firefighter turnout gear that has exceeded their service life. The total project cost is $33,135. If awarded, the grant will fund 95% or $31,473.50 of the project cost. with the city providing the required 5% match, $1,661.50. Approval of this resolution authorizes submission of the grant application and acceptance of the grant if awarded. Recommended action is to approve.

Thank you. Open a public hearing. Citizens comments. Council comments. Is there a motion to approve? This is a great thing.

Make a motion to accept the Firefighters Assistant Grant Program, if awarded, for the purchase of six sets of firefighter turnout gear to replace gear that has expired. Second.

Roll call.

Councilman Thomas. Yes. Councilwoman Dalbo. Yes. Councilman Rainbird.

Yes.

Mayor DePue. Yes. Councilwoman Gillis. Yes.

On 11EAR2026.0219, Business of the Year Quarter Program Update has been tabled. Item 12, Officer Reports. 12A, City Clerk.

I have nothing at this time except I apologize for the technical difficulties.

No worries. City Attorney.

Just one brief thing. You guys voted on the millage, and you didn't adjust it. But you're probably aware, those who are involved with the League of Cities, the legislature passed where basically anything above the rollback rate now needs a supermajority. And then anything above 110% of the rollback rate requires unanimous. So they increased the voting requirements that are set in stone for any increases on the millage moving forward.

Thank you, sir. Item 13, citizens' comments. Okay, let's not get all caught up in the political hate moving forward, and we are adjourned.